'I can remember when the great fires were on in the Blue Mountains in the late 1950s, standing where the flames were leaving the railway line and ash falling … Here we were covering a bush fire in shirts and ties – this is how we dressed because we were professionals.’
– Les Wasley, Cinesound/Movietone/ABC cameraman
The Shadowcatchers: A History of Cinematography in Australia is a lavish new coffee-table book published by the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS). It highlights the work of a largely unsung profession: the cinematographer.
Five living Australians have won Oscars for cinematography, for the following films: Dances with Wolves (1990), The English Patient (1996), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) and Memoirs of a Geisha (2006). Can you name them?
In celebration of the launch of The Shadowcatchers this month we are currently featuring cinematographers in action and images from just a few of the hundreds of productions featured in the book on our homepage. Camera crews working in documentary, features, newsreels, war reportage, advertising and television are all documented in the book, making it a valuable record of over a century of Australian creative film endeavour.
The author is filmmaker Martha Ansara, one of the first women to be admitted as a full member of the ACS (in 1980). Cinematography remains a male-dominated profession and Martha highlights the work of female cinematographers and camera crew in the book.
View a beautiful gallery of sample pages at The Shadowcatchers website, where you can also order a copy and find out the names of those five Oscar-winning cinematographers.
Martha Ansara is a lifelong supporter of the NFSA, where she sourced a great many of the photographs featured in the book. She writes about the process of writing and researching The Shadowcatchers at the NFSA blog.
See Martha’s work on ASO, including her involvement in the Sydney Women’s Film Group.
Photo (top left), L–R: Danny Ruhlmann (DOP), Rowan Woods (director) and Cate Blanchett (Tracy) making Little Fish (2005).
