Snap! 2006/07 £Free Inc
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
P1 R O W S E AT P 1 SNAP! 2006/07 £FREE INC. TAX Snap! Press photos from the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games The Melbourne Olympics and The first modern Olympics were Australian television share 2006 small events; the 1900 and 1904 as their fiftieth anniversary. Games were mere sideshows But the Games were shown live to the Paris and St Louis World only on the 5000 new television Fairs. Initiated in 1896 by the sets in Victoria. The newspaper French aristocrat Pierre de photograph still ruled; press Coubertin to encourage the moral photographers gave the Games virtue of athletic participation, its contemporary image. the Olympics initially was an event for competitors rather than Photography and, from the spectators. 1960s, television were crucial in creating a vast audience for The 1908 London Games was sport and especially its two most the first to attract substantial watched events, the Olympics attention, and photographers and and the World Cup. No regular the media began to understand P2 occasions focus comparable the potential of athletes as R O W S E AT attention, and their appeal spectacles, personalities P 3 – narratives of achievement and and stories. By the 1930s failure, individuality and solidarity, governments had made a similar coordination and speed – have discovery, and the Olympics been created and popularised by began its modern career as photographers, cameramen and setting for media dramas of producers. nationality and personality. Olympic photos With television and newsreel British, European and North humdrum shots of track and field coverage limited in scope and American newspapers. sports were a result. However coverage, the Melbourne Olympics sports which allowed close Most of the visiting lensmen were captured primarily through proximity to the competitors, {they included some women the press photographs produced such as track cycling and boxing, including Myrtle Cook-McGowern by the Olympic press corps. produced photos of powerful of the Montreal Daily Star} were immediacy. The use of flash at Astonishingly, the Olympic all-round news photographers. indoor venues also dramatised movement had yet to recognise Dave Cicero of International the athletes, while casting the the commercial and marketing News Photos was one of several background in shadow. potential of newsreel and Korean War news veterans to television coverage. Disputes cover the Games; Cicero told Collectively, the photos create between the Games organisers, the Women’s Weekly that he a detailed gallery of occasions TV and newsreel companies ‘was on the job when Marilyn and characters, more intimate, meant that no moving vision Monroe made her tour of the Far random and complex than the of the Games was shown outside East with husband No.2, Joe di several heavily-themed cinema P4 of Australia. However Melbourne Maggio’. The photographers’ eye documentaries which also R O W S E AT was the first Games to be for news stories meant that the recorded the Games. Olympia, P 5 televised live, although only most telling photos are frequently Leni Riefenstahl’s innovative to Victoria; many public venues anecdotal rather than action- movie of the 1936 Berlin Games relayed the TV and a highlights packed - portraits of competitors successfully combined sports package went nightly to NSW. and medallists or depictions photography and cinema, but the of accident aftermaths. film’s notorious association with About 500 journalists and Nazism may have encouraged the photographers came to Melbourne The photos also reflect the fact platitudinous character of 1950s for the Games. The photographs that the technology of sports Games documentaries. in the exhibition were taken photography was still developing, for the Global Olympic Pictures with most photographers using More revealing are the numerous Association, a temporary the Graflex Speed Graphic, the moving images of the Games partnership of the international news camera of choice since the produced by amateurs as home news services Associated Press, 1930s. With a large negative and movies. These images provide International News Photos and fast shutter, the Speed Graphic a less-structured insight into Planet News Limited. In addition, produced sharp action shots, but the Games from the spectator’s Melbourne attracted writers was incompatible with powerful point of view. and photographers from major telephoto lens. The often ‘Marksman Jerry Ouellette ‘Barry Donath (443) of Windsor, Canada, poses Australian shot put for photographs...’ champion in action...’ Affluence and amateurism Although many of the successful a high standard of community by the Olympics’ embrace of athletes of 1956 are still familiar or private wealth, more or less professionalism during the 1980s. names – Dawn Fraser, Betty restricting them to affluent In 1956, the state-sponsored Cuthbert, John Landy et al – the countries or individuals. athletes of the USSR and Eastern Games is inadequately recognised Europe were already evading This has long formed a for its significance in the history the amateur code and dominating fundamental dissonance at the and image of Australian sport. the podiums. heart of the Games - between the In competition, Melbourne was democratic arena of sport and a Our affluent European outpost Australia’s most successful disdain for the professional sports enthusiastically embraced several Olympic Games. With thirteen which permitted participation amateur sports and their major gold medals, the Australian by the less affluent. Even Jesse showpiece. Some, however, were team was third after the USSR Owens, the black American arcane pursuits even in Australia. and the USA. Australia took sprinter whose triumphs at the The Argus’s guide to the Games a prominent place due to its 1936 Berlin Olympics provided noted that gymnastics ‘is another P6 combination of affluence and an eloquent statement of sporting of the sports well-known and R O W S E AT amateurism. One of a tiny number democracy, quickly fell foul of the well-liked in Europe, but not often P 7 of countries to compete at every rigid amateur code, and did not seen in this country’. Regardless, Olympics, Australian sport has represent the USA again. full houses form the background long enjoyed an affinity to many of almost all the action photos. The photos make it clear that of the individual, amateur sports even the Olympic track and Due to their popularity and favoured by the Olympic movement. field events were still largely professionalism, team sports Envisaged as an idealistic the preserve of Europeans and had an ambiguous relationship alternative to the professional white Americans, although with the Olympics; most sports of Europe and the there were notable exceptions leading players were barred as Americas, the Olympics had including the Decathlon professionals. Australia had rarely a high proportion of dilettante champion Milton Campbell and competed in team sports before sports – swimming, sailing, Mildred McDaniel, who’s high 1956 and performed poorly in cycling, fencing, canoeing, jump set one of the Games’ Melbourne, losing to Formosa shooting, gymnastics – rarely few world records. The 1960s {Taiwan} in basketball and practised outside of Europe demise of racial segregation India in football. and the Americas. As the and colonialism was about to photographic record implies, broaden the Games demographic many of these sports required enormously, a process furthered ‘TY Wu of Formosa ‘I Novikov (left) of Russia on the range at and WJ Andre of United Williamstown’. States shown in the shoot- ing competition...’. P8 R O W S E AT P 9 The golden girls The 1956 high point of Australian other social minorities to assert Australian legend of sporting over- Olympic success was founded on their talents and personalities achievement, and of sport as an the performance of our women, against prejudice and stereotypes. expression of Australian lifestyle. who won most of Australia’s medals Photography and television were The mythology has survived and became the Australian face of crucial to this success. recognition that affluence and the Games. Both photographically enthusiasm were no longer enough, 1956 was almost the last time and athletically, the shy grace of that the AIS and other programs that Australia was a major force Betty Cuthbert is the outstanding were necessary to retain in track and field. Again, this was Australian image from the Games. Australian competitiveness. primarily due to the performance Barely 10 per cent of the of our women athletes; once Apart from winning athletes, competitors in 1956 were female participation in the a major Australian signifier was women {371 women, 2,813 men Games increased, this success the official Games vehicle, participated} and women only diminished quickly. a fleet of FE model Holdens, the competed in five of the seventeen first locally designed and styled Yet the last hurrah of Betty sports contested – athletics, Holden. Despite the 1950s’ first Cuthbert, Marlene Mathew P10 swimming, fencing, canoeing flush of affluence, the post-war, R O W S E AT and others had a profound effect. and gymnastics. The proportion post- depression world bore They caught Australia during P 11 of women athletes in the Australian a great awareness of scarcity. its post-war economic and baby team was also small, despite their A consequent reluctance to invest booms, the development of the success at the Helsinki Games heavily in Olympic infrastructure post-war Australian myth of a in 1952. This was a matter of meant that plans for large new democratic, affluent {car-owning, controversy, especially after stadia were discarded. The Olympic home-owning} suburban democracy. the Games. Village was located in a new public This was a marked change from the housing estate at the distant Women could not compete at Australian ideology of the 1920s suburb of Heidelberg. Funding the first modern Olympic Games. and 1930s, based around the the Games rather than housing According to Baron de Coubertin, virtues of rural life, Empire, Anzacs, was too politically sensitive.