Olive Cotton | Gerberas c1935/90
Olive Cotton
Gerberas c1935/1990
Silver gelatin Photograph
22 x 16 cm
Signed in pencil lower right
Edition of 130, produced to accompany a book of Cotton’s works
$3300
Olive Cotton (1911–2003) discovered the art of photography in childhood and stayed committed to it all her life. Her mother was a talented painter who died young; her father, a geologist, had learnt the elements of photography for his journey to the Antarctic in 1907 and later taught it to his children.
Having graduated with an Arts degree, Olive Cotton worked successfully as a photographer at the Dupain studios in Sydney until the end of World War II, then moved with her new husband Ross McInerney, to the bush near Koorawatha, NSW. For 20 years she had no access to darkroom facilities but kept taking photographs.
In 1964 Cotton opened a small studio in Cowra and took local portraits, weddings and commissions. After a 40-year absence from the city art scene she re-emerged in 1985 with her first solo show at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, she then concentrated on rediscovering and printing her life's work. A major exhibition of Cotton's works was shown at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2000.
Adapted from information provided by Sally McInerney, May 2005.
