Cecil Bostock

He presided over the transition from Pictorialism to Modernism and was a mentor to several famous Australian photographers: notably Harold Cazneaux and Max Dupain Cecil was first apprenticed as an electrical fitter in the Waverley Tramway Workshop.

[1] His Unit was the Field Artillery Brigade, May 1917 Reinforcements, which embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A28 Miltiades on 2 August 1917.

On 28 November 1916, a group of six photographers met at Bostock's 'Little Studio in Phillip Street' to form the Pictorialist " Sydney Camera Circle ".

[3][4] A "manifesto" was drawn up by Cecil and signed by all six attendees who pledged "to work and to advance pictorial photography and to show our own Australia in terms of sunlight rather than those of greyness and dismal shadows".

The style of pictorialism practiced by Australians was "concerned with the play of light, sunshine and shadow, and the attention to nature and the landscape, and had an affinity with the Heidelberg School of painters.

The Sydney Camera Circle(1920's - 40's): In 2002 a photography exhibit was held at the Shoto Museum of Art in Tokyo and the Members listed by Yuri Mitsuda, Curator in the Exhibition Catalogue were: Cecil Westmoreland Bostock, Harold Pierce Cazneaux, Monte Luke(Charles Montague Luke), Henri Marie Joseph Mallard, D'Archy J. Webster, Charles E. Wakeford, William Stewart White, James E. Paton, Arthur William Christopher Ford, and Kiichiro(or Kihei) ISHIDA.

[10][11][12] Just prior to his death from cancer, Bostock was instrumental in forming The Contemporary Camera Groupe, which was designed to unite artists and photographers.

[13] In his later years, Bostock's work turned toward big prints, glossy surfaces and geometric pattern which were becoming fashionable with young photographers in the late 1930s.