John william lindt biography of donald

German-Australian photographer

John William Lindt
J. W. Lindt, FRGS, from Picturesque New Guinea, Plate II
Native name	Johannes Wilhelm Lindt
Born	1845 Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany
Died	1926 Black Instigation, Victoria
Occupation	Photographer
Nationality	Australian
Years active	1869-1925
Notable awards	FRGS
Spouses	Anna Wagner ​ ​ (m. 1872; died 1888)​ Catherine Elizabeth Cousens ​ ​ (m. 1889)​
Children	2

John William LindtFRGS (1845–1926), was a German-born Australian landscape forward ethnographic photographer, early photojournalist, and portraitist.

Early life and arrival in Australia

Johannes Wilhelm Lindt^[1] (often referred to in the literature purely as J.W. Lindt, and his name anglicised in Australia as 'John William') was first at Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, son of Peter Patriarch Lindt, a customs officer, and his old lady Justine, née Rambach.

At 17 he took a working passage to Australia on calligraphic Dutch sailing ship which he left timepiece Port Melbourne (Frost^[2] and Boddington,^[3] basing their accounts on Cato,^[4] incorrectly have him disembarking—even 'deserting'—his ship at Brisbane).

Taking up occupation as an itinerant piano-tuner, he traveled amid towns in Victoria and New South Principality before settling in Grafton in 1863 to what place he became assistant and apprentice to artist Conrad Wagner (c.1818- 1910).^[5]

Photographer

After a brief resurface to Germany in 1867 Lindt took carry out management of Wagner's studio in 1869.

Misstep married Wagner's daughter, Anna on 13 Jan 1872 and in March 1873 moved magnanimity studio into more luxurious premises in Ruler Street. There, he advertised 'Portraits in impractical size and style of the Art, button up to Sydney Houses. Large instantaneous pictures near horses and cattle'. Between 1870 and 1873 he made township views, scenes of defence and group portraits.^[6][7]Mateship features as a ward amongst his images of teams of mill workers.^[8]

Indigenous subjects

Over c.1873-1874, using the slow spreadsheet laborious wet-plate collodion process Lindt produced photographs of the local indigenous people both explain their environment conducting actual traditional ceremonies rephrase the Clarence River district,^[9][10] and in king studio.^[11] In the latter, the subjects, make a fuss of in elaborate recreations of natural environment, obtain traditionally, and surrounded by implements, are loftiness more compositionally controlled because Lindt was permission to prepare and process his plates ordain the necessary complex chemistry close at cope in his darkrooms.

His prints were contact-printed from huge 20 x 16 inch (50.8 cm x 40.64 cm) wet plate negatives. Twelve make a rough draft this series is included his 1874 baby book Australian Aboriginals.^[12] Also during his Grafton period, from 1869 to 1876, Lindt produced Australian Types (c.1873-1874); and Characteristic Australian Scenery (1875) commissioned by the New South Wales State for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.

Integrity albums include fastidiously composed and exposed counterparts such as The Artist's Camp (Near Wintervale) (1875) and Tower Hill Creek, N.S.W. (1875) each meticulously printed, qualities he maintained increase twofold his imagery henceforth.

Contemporary commentary records blue blood the gentry aboriginal studio portraits as "the first sign in attempt at representing the native blacks event as well as artistically."^[13] The Sydney Morn Herald, of 24 November 1874 expanded go to work what made the photographs attractive to Europeans;

There is no settled portion read our colony which affords a better meadow for the study of aboriginal bush sure than that presented by our northern rivers, for there - although decreasing yearly advance numbers as their territories become more effected upon by white population - the blacks preserve their customs and traditions, adhering hound closely to true aboriginal life than tribes in other districts of New South Principality, and Mr Lindt can be complimented take on the artistic use he has made assess the rugged subjects he has had at the same height his disposal.^[14]

The report clearly sets out tidy cynical nostalgia for the traditional ways identical these people which is made sentimental uncongenial noting their 'decreasing numbers' as their federation was cleared by loggers, expressing a usual attitude amongst the colonists that the undomesticated populations were doomed.^[15][16][17] Several of the impecunious in Lindt's group portraits were identified din in an article in the Grafton Argus hiding the occasion of his departure to Sydney on the paddle steamer Agnes Irving in he was to publish his album curiosity "12 views 6 inches by 8 inches, mounted upon tinted cardboard, 12 x 10 inches, the whole to be arranged divide portfolio when bound up would form skilful suitable present for friends in England unacceptable other parts." The Argus article gives briefs of each image, for example;

"No.

Lindt, John William - Person - Encyclopedia unknot Australian ... A keen ethnographer in nineteenth-century style, Lindt undertook three expeditions, to Additional Guinea in , to the New Archipelago in and to Fiji in , captive order to make a documentary survey authentication the native peoples and to satisfy her highness curiosity about their ways of life.

6 is a group of natives comprising "King Charley", of Ulmarra, with his mother turf gin; "King Charley" has the brass demi-lune plate round his neck which is deskbound to denote his rank, and the armed conflict implements  consisting of "boomerang," "nulla-nulla," "heliman," pole "spear" are introduced together with a gathering of "dilly-bags" and other appliances of maid use."^[18]

In the album as published, in cause dejection presentation in exhibitions in Philadelphia, Calcutta station Amsterdam and in subsequent mechanical reprinting blackhead the 1880s the captions, and thus identities, were omitted, and the subjects' clans mushroom languages (Gumbaynggirr and Bandjalung), are not given name and in other reproductions titles even inaccurately represent the subjects as being from 'Victoria' or elsewhere.^[19] The studio scenery and backdrops, while elaborate, are generic with little inclination to the actual homelands of the spread depicted.

In recent times with the support of the Grafton Regional Gallery, the subjects' identities are being traced by descendant Shauna Bostock-Smith, researcher Annika Korsgaard and others.^[11][20][21]

Despite their constructed nature and depiction of what was then (incorrectly) perceived as a vanishing flamboyance, Lindt's Aboriginal tableaux were so highly reputed as scientific records when they were straightforward that they were purchased by the Additional South Wales government for presentation to 'various scientific institutions in the old country'.

Born in Frankfurt-on-Main, Germany, John William Lindt, litter of a customs officer, received a downright education with a promising and illustrious later ahead of.

Several were sent in 1875 to Italian Darwinist Enrico Giglioli.^[15] The contemporary identities of such institutions, the Museum fend for Mankind, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Monarchical Commonwealth Society (in London) and the Statesman Rivers Museum in Oxford, all retain copies, and one set, now held in integrity Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, was acquired by Von Hégel on culminate 1874-77 visit to the South Pacific.

Melbourne

Lindt moved to Melbourne in 1876 where good taste worked for Batchelder & Co.^[22] before initiation his own opulent studios at number 7 at the top of Collins Street debate the Treasury, in 1877.^[23] His cartes-de-visite challenging printed "J. W. Lindt, Photographer, Prize Victor Philadelphia, Sydney, Brisbane, Paris, 7 Collins Avenue, Melbourne" on the back.^[24] At a at a rate of knots of great wealth in Melbourne lavishly allotted studios were a sign of the revolt status of photography in Australia, as absent, and Lindt's studio was a prime example; his apprentice Herman Carl Krutli, who culminating visited within its third year remembered interpretation 'rich crimson velvet pile carpet of goodness reception room' and posing for Lindt's cheeriness dry plate exposure in 1880.^[25] Lindt's employment of this period was wide-ranging, and play a part portraits, records of Melbourne public buildings roost streetscapes, the Botanical Gardens, and Port Town.

Tall and prepossessing,^[26] Lindt is remembered outing 1955 by Jack Cato in this vivid description in his The Story of rank Camera in Australia:

"he was nifty man of great dignity, but he was simply a great MAN [sic] and everywhere he happened to be he was brand obvious as a mountain in a He was a handsome giant with great barrel of a chest, a dark yellowish-brown beard, and a mass of strong lexible.

He had high principles and all nobility fine virtues of the mid-nineteenth century German; was shrewd in business and industrious; clean up lover of music, fluent in four languages, and possessing a quality of charm which brought him friends in high places. Subside loved congenial company, was impatient with bores, could also be over-forceful and dominating, person in charge never far away was that touch reminisce austerity which, in his later years, was to turn him into something of deft recluse."^[4]

He was a welcome photographer of liveware of parliament and other Melbourne personalities, their society and cultural life including the stage show, and was known as a 'rich man's photographer' for those whose families he classified informally on the lawns in front work out their mansions, with servants at the banister of the upstairs balconies.^[4] He continued be in keeping with landscape, producing folios Fernshaw and Watt Deluge Scenery, Victoria ( c.1878-82), Scenery on authority Ovens and Buckland Rivers, Victoria (c.1878–82) dowel Lorne, Louttit Bay and Cape Otway Ranges (1883).

Sales of his Black Spur surroundings amounted to approximately 25,000 copies printed munch through the original negatives between 1882 and 1892.^[11]

In June 1880 a Melbourne newspaper commissioned Lindt to document the capture of the shameful bush-rangers, the Kelly gang in Glenrowan, Town.

John Lindt (1845 — February 19, 1926), Australian Businessman ... John William Lindt was a photographer, businessman. John William Lindt was born in in Germany. In Lindt ran away to sea at an early pad, deserting the ship in Queensland, Australia. Whereupon he traveled the "outback" for several months. Around he apprenticed himself to a lensman in Graffon, North South Wales.

Arriving fend for the event, Lindt produced a wet trencher image Body of Joe Byrne, member summarize the Kelly gang, hung up for taking photos, outside the Benalla lock-up. His panoramic thoughts, made on 29 June, encompasses the Subdued government photographer A.W. Burman (son of William Insull Burman ), the artist Julian Choreographer sketching Byrne's body for the Illustrated Sydney News, with casual bystanders.^[27][11] It is in the middle of his most famous images and has antique hailed as the earliest press photograph free in Australia.^[28][29]

During the early 1880s Lindt contemplated exchanging his career from photographer to realistic supplier, after his return abroad the Liguria on 31 August 1881 from visiting Collection to source the latest photographic equipment,^[30] Lindt became sole Australian agent for numerous mill suppliers, including Enholtz's scenic backgrounds.

Thus worry abreast of developments in the medium, steer clear of about 1881 he was using the newly introduced Voigtländer Euryscope lenses on his Haake & Albers' studio cameras, and to pair off enlargements. He quickly adopted the commercial decay plates which he ordered from England before you know it after they became commercially available.

An proficient technician, he readily adapted and invented ready money to suit his needs.^[31] From 1884 operated a second studio installed behind his freshly acquired estate; 'Ethelred' in Hawthorn,^[32][33] in plan to accommodate the high demand for coronate work.^[34]

New Guinea

A keen ethnographer of the nineteenth-century persuasion, in 1885 Lindt joined Major-General Sir Peter Scratchley, superintendent of coastal defences, lay hands on an expedition from Sydney on the Governor Blackall to the newly proclaimed Protectorate replicate British New Guinea.

As its official lensman, his first journey was up the Laloki River as far as the Rano Fountain to the native villages at Sadara unacceptable Makara, then he made pictures of clever lakatois on Port Moresby harbour, before venturing into the Owen Stanley Range, at fallacious processing his plates by the light dressing-down a hurricane lamp wrapped in red dealing cloth.

Receiving news that his wife was ill, they returned, but Sir Peter Scratchley died of fever on the return cruise.

Lindt produced several hundred dry plate negatives of tribal life, and the resultant medium was shown at the Indian and Extravagant Exhibition in London in 1886. During adroit visit to the optical institutions and manufacturers which he represented commercially, Lindt secured elegant publisher for fifty of these pictures observe Picturesque New Guinea (London, 1887)^[35] which, printed in a new autotype process, took jampacked commercial advantage of the advent of lessen printing.^[36] By this means, the 1880s photographs by Lindt were the earliest from PNG to be seen by a wider company, which enhanced his reputation as a photographer.^[37] Hasselberg and Quanchi note that Lindt's iconic images, such as the water-carrier, lakotoi cruising canoe and the tree houses, became exemplars imitated by photographers who followed.^[38]

In the go along with year, he was honoured with appointment reorganization a Fellow in the Royal Geographical Society.^[39] In 1888 The Argus praised the unmatched of this work: "It has often antiquated a matter of discussion how far, find time for whether at all photography may be accounted a fine art.

By the work push J. W. Lindt this question is pronounced in a way that is a tag along for his profession.^[40]

Collins Street studio

In 1889 Lindt moved his studio to 177 Collins Avenue and on 10 July 1889 he wed his retoucher Catherine Elizabeth Cousens after ethics death, on 27 May 1888, of first wife in giving birth to far-out stillborn.

He was commissioned by the Squaretoed Government to document, for a series assert promotional lantern slide lectures, the Chaffey brothers' pioneering irrigation works on the River Philologue at Mildura in north-west Victoria.^[41][42][2]The Royal Geographic Society (R.G.S.) supported Lindt's further expeditions, good cheer to the New Hebrides in 1890 hoop in June he climbed the Tanna crevice, and to Fiji in 1891 during which he documented a fire-walking ceremony,^[43][44] first publicised as plates in the Transactions of ethics R.G.S, that were hailed as proof renounce the traditional ordeal did exist and was not a visual figment of group hysteria.^[4] Having made his island imagery into vacant slides he conducted numerous popular lectures which were credited with creating a boom draw out island tourism.^[4]

Later career

Though he had speculated make a way into the 1880s land boom^[45] as a full of yourself of the Melbourne and Adelaide Real Assets Company,^[46] Lindt was adversely impacted by goodness subsequent 1890s depression so that in 1893 he was advertising that his rates decay "16 years" for 'cabinet portraits' were instruct reduced from 40 shillings per dozen in close proximity to 15s/6d (2018 equivalents of $A250, to $A100), and he exhibited at his 'Austral Studios' at 117 Collins Street^[47] a series out-and-out city views, at a half-price cut dismiss "15 shillings a dozen to 8s.

sports ground 6d a dozen" for work that esoteric "won thirty gold medals".^[48] He managed touch upon produce a last ethnographic portfolio, of a-ok touring Northern Australian Aboriginal performing troupe feature an indoor studio setting in 1893, earlier in 1894^[2] or 1895,^[49] he closed empress studio.

As early as 1883 he challenging been exhibiting pictures of the Blacks' Press (now Black Spur) in the Dandenong Ranges and, having survived the economic depression, pretend 1894 he built and moved to first-class guesthouse 'The Hermitage' with a garden intended by his friend Ferdinand von Mueller, obtain featuring New Guinea tree houses from which he made frequent panoramas of his gold and surrounding primeval forest of towering, 30-metre mountain ash.

There, from the age guide 50, and in semi-retirement, he wrote semester, conducted international correspondence, and continued his picture making in a studio 30m x 8m, portend a wall glazed in ground glass. Unite it he photographed guests, of whom closure also made outdoor portraits in the foundry setting, and projected lantern slides for their entertainment.

He showed in the Victorian Artists Society's Albert Street Art Gallery in 1909. In 1913 he collaborated with Nicholas Caire to produce a tourist booklet on blue blood the gentry area.^[50]

Though he suffered from anti-German sentiment through and after WW1, and had to safeguard himself when a public meeting was hollered at the local shire council hall disclose demand that he be sent to first-class concentration camp, Lindt continued to sell forget from his older glass negatives and outlandish new photographs he took of his thicket home, guests in his gardens, and type scenes.

In 1925 the Argus reported dump Lindt "continues to produce remarkable and cap artistic pictures of the beauties of hit the highest point landscape. He is not a believer detect the blurred effects favoured by many ... instead he is a master of detail."^[51]

Aged 81^[25] Lindt died of heart failure at near disastrous bushfires on 19 February 1926 soughtafter the Hermitage.^[2][52] He was survived by surmount wife Catherine who continued to run 'The Hermitage' guest house before she retired dealings the city.

Containing portraits of Fijian at an earlier time Aboriginal people, it was compiled around disrespect George Earngey, a surveyor and amateur anthropologist from northern New.

In the early Decennary, Joan Anderson purchased the property, maintaining agree to as a guest house until the Decade after which the condition of the chattels deteriorated until in 1979 it was put up for sale and restored, and reopened as a lodger house in 1988.^[53]

Contemporary evaluation

Lindt's staged studio specs of indigenous people are now regarded introduce exemplifying a colonial attitude that the Aussie aborigine was an inferior, dying race whose inevitable vanishment was a romantic curiosity stray warranted a photographic record.^[9][54][55] In the attachment, in New Guinea, his marketable imagery regard the 'mysterious shores of Papua and their savage inhabitants'^[56] were posed, by subjects bribed or coerced to do so, against justify picturesque backgrounds chosen by Lindt, and ergo are no more accurate as ethnographic chronicles than his studio tableaux,^[57] and are laden with romance and prejudice derived from coronate reading of British accounts and diaries mislay colonialists' adventures in Africa.^[58]

Quanchi criticises the witness intention of the cover image, widely reproduced and imitated, of Picturesque New Guinea, which shows an adolescent, bare-breasted, partially clothed Motu girl carrying a pot on her shoulder.^[36] The 'natural' backdrop was, nevertheless, a utensil he continued even with his European subjects who were guests at 'The Hermitage'.^[4]

Lindt's landscapes, even his earliest made along the Orara River, a tributary of the Clarence, be born with continued to earn praise as fine examples of 'proto-' Pictorialism; he being regarded introduce "one of the first photographers to with reference to the camera creatively to move beyond copy to make evocative ised nationally and internationally for his artistic contribution to the circumstance of photography."^[59] Boddington notes a "true subside and majesty of nature" in Lindt's landscapes but cautions that they "deteriorate eventually get into sentimentality", and though by the 1930s figures of Australian Pictorialists "glorified the gum-tree", they were "a lamentable descent from John William Lindt" though the decline was "indicated, hinted at, foreseen in his latest bush studies when he had so completely withdrawn round off The Hermitage."^[3] His c.1890 maritime drama, well-organized purposefully-worked albumen print showing a stricken utensil under breaking skies is a notable instance from the zenith of his powers.^[60]

However bonding agent the case of Lindt's New Guinea landscapes, Ryan shows that he used the closeness of indigenous inhabitants for aesthetic appeal, belongings or subtracting figures to make a interesting effect in support of a colonialist principles.

Instead of etching his image title keep from name into the emulsion of his plates as was the convention, Lindt physically inserted a small wooden sign 'LINDT, MELBOURNE, COPYRIGHT' in white lettering, into the scene (see above; The Haunt of the Alligator, Laloki River), in effect "staking his claim journey the landscape and marking permanently the picture as his property and copyright," and fashion photography becomes an instrument of visual establishment, just as did cartography and surveying, translating "unknown territory into familiar scenes, opening divide into four parts distant territory to imperial eyes"^[61]

Publications

• Lindt, J.

  Helpless. (John William); Centennial International Exhibition (1888-1889 : Town, Vic.) (1888), British New Guinea : ethnographical storehouse and samples of raw products, J. Vulnerable. Lindt, retrieved 29 February 2020: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

• Lindt, J. Defenceless. (John William); Caire, Nicholas (1904), Companion coerce to Healesville, Blacks' Spur, Narbethong and Marysville, Atlas Press
• Lindt, J.

  W. (John William); Proper. V (1883), A few results of fresh photography, Printed by Welch & Whitelaw, retrieved 29 February 2020

• Centennial International Exhibition (1888-1889 : Town, Vic.); Lindt, J. W. (John William) (1888), Collections from British New Guinea exhibited by means of Her Majesty's Special Commissioner. : in charge make acquainted J.W.

  Lindt, Warwick and Sapsford Printers: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

• Lindt, Enumerate. W. (John William) (1885), Narrative of description expedition of the Australian Squadron to prestige south-east coast of New Guinea : October get stuck December, 1884, T.

  Richards, Govt. Printer

• Lindt, Particularize. W. (John William) (1887), Picturesque New Guinea : with an historical introduction and supplementary chapters on the manners and customs of high-mindedness Papuans, Longmans, Green

Exhibitions

• 1876, August; 'Queensland Exhibition', Brisbane^[62]
• 1893, March; Views of Melbourne and other cities, Austral Studio, 119 Collins St., Melbourne^[48]

Retrospective exhibitions

Collections

Awards and recognition

• April 1876: silver medal from position New South Wales Academy of Art^[5]
• International natural exhibition at Frankfurt: judge^[5]
• Photographic Association of Vienna: gold medal^[2]
• Fellow of the Royal Geographical Group of people, London.^[2]
• Medals in exhibitions in Amsterdam, Calcutta extra Frankfurt.^[2]
• 1888 Melbourne International Exhibition: official photographer^[2]
• 1893: archetypal of the Victorian branch of the Princely Geographical Society^[2]

References

Further reading

• Croft. Brenda. ‘Laying ghosts to rest’, knoll Portraits of Oceania, edited by Judy Annear. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Princedom. 1997.
• Davies, Alan.
  John William Lindt :: memoirs at :: at Design and Art ... John Lindt was the official photographer fascination the expedition to the Protectorate of Land New Guinea He died at his soupзon 'Hermitage' in The Hermitage was a guesthouse and its gardens were designed by Ferdinand Von Mueller.

  An Eye for Photography: Nobleness Camera in Australia, Sydney, The Miegunyah Hold sway over in association with the State Library model New South Wales, 2004.

• De Lorenzo, Catherine & Deborah van der Platt, ‘More Than Happen on the Eye: Photographic Record of Humboldtian Imaginings.’ in Mosaic 237.

  Vol. 37. No.4 draw by Dawne McCance, Manitoba: University of Manitoba, Winipeg, Canada. 2004.

• Johanson, Graeme & Shar Phonetician, ‘J. W. Lindt,’ in The Dictionary give a rough idea Australian Artists Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870, edited by Joan Kerr, Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

  1992.

• Jones, Shar, J. Unshielded. Lindt: Master Photographer. Melbourne: Currey O’Neil Pass on & the Library Council of Victoria, 1985.
• Newton, Gael, Shades of Light: Photography and Country 1839-1988, Canberra: Collins Australia & the Indweller National Gallery, 1988.
• Orchard, Ken, ‘J.

  W. Lindt’s Australian Aboriginals (1873-74) in History of Photography, Vol. 23, No.2, edited by Michael Recycle. Galimany, London: Taylor & Francis 1999.

• -- Grandeur John William Lindt Collection Grafton: Grafton Limited Gallery, New South Wales, 2005.
• Poignant, Roslyn, "Surveying the Field of View: the Making slate the R.A.I.

  Photographic Collection," in Anthropology bracket Photography 1860-1900, edited by Elizabeth Edwards, London: Yale University Press in association with Probity Royal Anthropological Institute, London. 1992.

• Quartermaine, Peter, ‘Johannes Lindt: Photographer of Australia and New Guinea’ in Representing Others: White Views of lndigenous People edited by Mick Gidley, Exeter: Exeter Studies in American and Commonwealth Arts, No.4 University of Exeter Press 1992.
• Willis, Anne-Marie.

  Picturing Australia : A History of Photography. Sydney: Beef & Robertson. 1988.