15 Facts About Olive Cotton

Olive Cotton was a pioneering Australian modernist photographer of the 1930s and 1940s working in Sydney.

Olive Edith Cotton was born on 11 July 1911, the eldest child in an artistic, intellectual family.

Olive Cotton's mother was a painter and pianist while Leo was a geologist, who took photographs on Sir Ernest Shackleton's expedition to the Antarctic in 1907.

An uncle, Frank Olive Cotton was a professor of physiology and her grandfather, Francis Olive Cotton, was a Member of the NSW Legislative Assembly, initially as part of the first Labor Caucus, and later as an anti-Federationist Free Trader.

Olive Cotton joined The Sydney Camera Circle and the Photographic Society of New South Wales, gaining instruction and encouragement from important photographers such as Harold Cazneaux.

Olive Cotton exhibited her first photograph, "Dusk", at the New South Wales Photographic Society's Interstate Exhibition of 1932.

Olive Cotton's contemporaries included Damien Parer, Geoff Powell, the model Jean Lorraine and photographer Olga Sharpe, who frequented the studio.

However whenever possible Olive Cotton photographed visiting celebrities or interesting objects in the studio, even capturing Dupain working in her piece, "Fashion shot, Cronulla Sandhills, circa 1937" and made portraits of him.

Olive Cotton's photography was personal in feeling with an appreciation of certain qualities of light in the surroundings.

Tea cup ballet was photographed in the studio after Olive Cotton had bought some inexpensive china from Woolworth's to replace the old chipped studio crockery.

Tea cup ballet features on the cover of the book Olive Cotton: Photographer published by the National Library of Australia in 1995.

Olive Cotton received numerous commissions in 1945, including photographs of winter and spring flowers for Helen Blaxland's book Flowerpieces, which included some images by Dupain.

In 1947, Olive Cotton moved to Cowra, New South Wales, with husband Ross McInerney and from 1959 she taught Mathematics at Cowra High School until 1964 when she opened a small photographic studio in the town, taking many portraits, wedding photographs, etc.

Olive Cotton, funded by a 1983 Australia Council grant printed decades-old negatives.

In mid-1947, Olive Cotton went to live in the bush 35km from Cowra, New South Wales, with her new husband Ross McInerney.