Athol Shmith
Louis Athol Shmith AM (19 August 1914 – 21 October 1990) was an Australian studio portrait and fashion photographer and photography educator in his home city of Melbourne, Australia.
His father gave him a camera as a teenager and what was a hobby became a profession in his late teens when Shmith, who had an interest in theatre and played at charity performances, was asked to take the publicity photographs and stills for a show.
[2] At a mere twenty-five years of age, in 1939 he became a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and Shmith moved his business to a studio in the Rue de la Paix building at 125 Collins Street,[4] run with the assistance of his brother Clive, and sister, Verna, who was his receptionist and who became an expert negative retoucher.
When he attempted to enlist, he failed the medical examination, but he conducted photographic analyses for the army, including the interpretation of aerials of the American landing in Italy.
Shmith was represented internationally by the Pix agency which brought his work to the cover of LIFE magazine of 3 Aug 1942; his portrait of the son of General MacArthur who was in the country with his family at the time.
After World War II Shmith embraced the "New Look"[9][10][11] and the spirit of post-war recovery in fashion illustration, becoming the most respected professional in the field in Australia.
[16] Athol Shmith's commercial career produced photographs that embodied a world of grace, glamour and allure and his dramatic portraits remain a record of significant personalities of his era.
[18] His technical expertise was also considerable; in 1945, he co-developed and patented (application 1947, granted 1950) a photo-finish racecourse camera invented by his friend, Melbourne scientist Bertram Alston Pearl; the 'Camera Graph' continuous-flow film system, with the innovation of a neon lamp in the finish-post, the oscillations of which record a time-register on the image.
[19] Smith was responsible for devising a rapid film processing method that would cut the time to 65 seconds, enabling course officials to announce a result moments after the running of the race.
Jennie Boddington was appointed as its first curator and she commissioned Shmith, as NGV council member (1972–75), to travel to Britain and France in 1973, to acquire international photographs for the collection.
As a consequence, in 1975 he established a fruitful partnership between the gallery and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France which led to numbers of Australian photographers' work entering their collection.
[24] His support assisted the careers of students whom he closely mentored such as Sue Ford, Bill Henson, Carol Jerrems, Rod McNicol, Phil Quirk, Andrew Chapman and Christopher Koller.
A brain tumour forced his retirement from the College in 1979, but after surgery and recovery he continued with a limited professional practice, including documentation of the 1980 opening of the High Court of Australia building.
[32] The Paris End: Photography, Fashion and Glamour at the NGV 3 June – 1 October included Shmith's photographs along with those of Jack Cato, Mina Moore, Ruth Hollick, Wolfgang Sievers, Helmut Newton and Henry Talbot and was accompanied by a substantial publication by NGV Curator of Photography Susan van Wyck[33] Athol Shmith was urbane, charming and witty and also madcap.
