Art photographer John Kaufmann was born at Truro, near Kapunda in South Australia, on 30 December 1864, the son of Alexander Kauffmann, the local storekeeper. The family moved to Adelaide in 1868 and in the early 1880s John Kauffmann worked as a clerk in the office of Adelaide architect J.H. Grainger. In 1886 he attended evening art classes run by Harry P. Gill, director of the Adelaide School of Design.
In 1887 Kauffmann travelled to England where he worked in the office of a firm of London architects. Here he spent time photographing and sketching on weekend and holiday excursions to rural England, and it was here that he became interested in Pictorial photography and decided to pursue a career as an artist photographer. He spent three years studying chemistry at Zurich University, followed by experience at a fashionable Vienna portrait studio and a year studying photo-technology in Bavaria. By the time he returned to Adelaide in 1897 he was well versed in the art of Pictorial photography and had the necessary technical knowledge to practise it successfully.
Kauffmann was elected a member of the South Australian Photographic Society (q.v.) in July 1897 and showed specimen prints at that meeting. The Austral Company of Melbourne made bromide enlargements for Kauffmann which he submitted to the Society of Artists in Sydney for inclusion in their annual exhibition, but the society would not accept photography. However, the prints were shown in Sydney by the photographic firm of Baker and Rouse and were described by one Sydney newspaper as ‘some of the most perfect photographic work ever seen … clear and truly artistic’.
A week later the Australasian Photographic Review said the prints were ‘full of detail, yet beautifully soft … Mr Kauffmann is an artist as well as a photographer’.548 The prints were also shown in Adelaide, where the Observer reported:
In the course of his studies abroad Mr Kauffmann, jun., made a number of beautiful photographs of scenery, principally in Switzerland; and Messrs. Baker and Rouse, the well-known photographers in Rundle-street, have produced enlargements of them on the Pearl bromide paper specially manufactured by the firm in Melbourne. These reproductions are exquisite in the delicacy and gradation of the tones, giving a depth and softness singularly attractive to the eye of the lover of artistic effect, bearing eloquent testimony to the quality of the paper and the process. There are views of Lake Maggiore, Moravian village scenes, and a most delightful sketch of an old village near Zurich. The majority of the pictures present alluring landscape, water, and cloud interpretations of Nature, and are well worth inspection.bq). 1
In 1899 Kauffmann won first and third prizes in the landscape category of the New South Wales Photographic Society’s Inter-Colonial Exhibition, and in 1901 was a judge, along with his former art teacher H.P. Gill, at the South Australian Photographic Society’s annual exhibition, the first at which awards were made.
At the May 1902 meeting of the South Australian Photographic Society lantern slides made by members were shown and subjected to criticism. A ‘novelty’ introduced by John Kauffmann was a series of slides produced by the carbon process. ‘The colours were numerous, and in some instances peculiarly suited to the subject of the picture.’
John Kauffmann’s work stimulated the South Australian Photographic Society’s interest in Pictorial photography and, while he did act as a judge and show his work at the society’s meetings and exhibitions, he did not write articles or give lectures and demonstrations at meetings of either his own or other photographic societies.
An interview with John Kauffmann was published in the Australian Photographic Journal on 20 December 1907:
When Mr Kauffmann, of Adelaide, arrived in Sydney a week or so ago, we felt that it was our duty to levy on the gifted and accomplished photographer so that our readers should know more of the man and his work, much of which has been reproduced in the A.P.J. for some years past and, it goes without saying, has created quite a circle of admirers. It will be already known to our readers that Mr Kauffmann has had three pictures accepted this year at the Royal Photographic Society, London, being one more than last year …
Mr Kauffmann, a South Australian by birth, has had the supreme advantage of a ten years’ sojourn in Europe, where he has had the opportunity of studying the works of advanced pictorialists, both on the Continent and in England. Inspired by their aims, he found the camera held a new meaning for him, and he indefatigably sought for technical perfection of method, so that he could render nature according to his own lights. He acknowledges being largely influenced by such powerful workers as Drs. Heneberg and Spitzer, Hans Watzek, Heinrich Kuhn, and other leading members of the Austrian school, which school, at the present time, holds an unique position for strength and originality amongst the great pictorial schools of the world …
Asked as to his opinion of pictorial photography in Australia, Mr Kauffmann said it is but slowly gaining ground … Of the club of which he is a member, the Kapunda Camera Club, he speaks in warm terms, and states that the members are aiming high, and many of them will yet be heard of. We had the pleasure of looking through Mr Kauffmann’s portfolio of [photographs] and must say that it is a rare treat to see such extremely excellent all-round work by one man.bq).
Kapunda was a former copper mining town about 12 miles from Truro, the town where Kauffman was born, and a short train journey from his home in Adelaide. A Kapunda amateur photographer, Dorothy Warner (q.v.), has recalled camera excursions she had with Kauffmann when she was a teenager.
The Camera Club held exhibitions from time to time and received entries from city and country areas and Mr Kauffmann came there as judge and came many times later as guest of my parents. He and my father toured the country nearby in search of good subject matter. His home was at that time with his sister in North Adelaide. Later he went to Melbourne where he set up a studio and did some very fine work … It was from him that I learned so much, for on his visits to us we developed and printed together, much of it carbon work. He and I visited Baker’s Flat, an old Irish settlement the other side of the Kapunda copper mine. The houses were quaint thatched places where very aged Irish born people lived. Pigs, poultry and humans all had access to these places. A photographer’s paradise. It was from a photograph I took there, a carbon print, that I got the champion prize of a silver medal at the Women’s Work Exhibition.bq). 2
At the October 1907 meeting of the Kapunda Photographic Club the president referred to ‘the success of Mr J. Kauffmann, a member of the club, who had three pictures accepted by the Royal [Photographic] Society of London. He believed that two of the three subjects were Kapunda pictures – views of Baker’s Flat.’ In response to remarks about the success of Kapunda amateurs at recent exhibitions, the secretary, Thomas Warner, said that:
...whatever success his daughter or members of the club had achieved in pictorial photography was mainly due to the great assistance rendered by Mr Kauffmann. Last year we had the pleasure of congratulating Mr Kauffmann on getting two of his pictures accepted by the London Royal; but this year he has gone one better, and we are delighted to hear that three examples of his work have found their place on the walls of the Royal. It is undoubtedly a great honour, especially as one of his pictures, ‘Thro’ the Woods’, accepted by such a powerful body as the Royal Society Hanging Committee, had been adversely criticised in one of the Adelaide papers recently. It showed that in England they had very different opinions of the work to what somebody in Adelaide had. The other two pictures accepted were ‘The Lonely Cottage’ and ‘The Brow of the Hill’, the two latter being view of Baker’s Flat, Kapunda. That the club send its hearty congratulations to Mr Kauffmann (who is on a visit to Victoria) was unanimously agreed to.bq). 3
Around 1909 John Kauffman moved to Melbourne where he exhibited in local and international salons and where he eventually opened his own studio c.1917. In 1919 The Art of John Kauffmann was published, the first monograph about an Australian photographer. The book contained twenty of his photographs and a text written by Leslie Beer, editor of Harrington’s Photographic Journal.
To those outside his circle of friends John Kauffmann appeared to be vain and aloof, but to those who knew him well he was affectionate and entertaining. Melbourne photographer Jack Cato described him as:
... never quite one of us, those years in Europe having left him a confirmed Continental. He was 6ft. 3 ins. tall, very dignified and quiet, and seriously preoccupied with his thoughts. I knew him for thirty years, saw him almost every week, yet never knew him to smile. He was one of the best- dressed men in Melbourne; one would always note his ‘Red Indian’ profile as he strolled ‘The Block’ complete with yellow gloves, cane, spats and his pince-nez on a silk cord. He was usually off to an art exhibition, a chamber music recital, or an alfresco lunch in the Botanical Gardens, where he could find again something of the spirit of the Vienna Woods.bq). 4
John Kauffmann died in Melbourne in November 1942.
In 1996 a travelling exhibition of John Kauffmann’s work, Soft But True, was arranged by the National Gallery of Australia, and to mark the occasion the Gallery published John Kauffmann, Art Photographer written by Gael Newton, the Gallery’s Curator of Australian Photography.
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Text taken from:
Noye, R.J. (2007) ‘Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915’, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, pp. 173-175.
- Writers:
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- Date written:
- 2013
- Last updated:
- 2013
