Exhibit provides snapshot of Australian wool industry boom years

  • 2014-04-12
Art enthusiasts from Mitcham, Victoria, and surrounding areas were given a personal insight recently into life on an outback sheep station during the 1950s by acclaimed photographer Francis Reiss.

Originally from Hamburg in Germany, Reiss took an early interest in photography and after his Danish parents moved to Great Britain in 1936, he took it up seriously at the tender age of nine.

At 17, he became the youngest professional staff photographer taken on by the UK’s Picture Post magazine, which went on to publish more than 60 of his picture stories. By 1947, Reiss had moved to New York, where he worked for LIFE magazine extensively.

His latest exhibition incorporates photographs taken after he had left the industry in 1951 to enter the wool trade in Australia. It was a time when the Australian way of life was epitomised by this industry.

Reiss’s photographs represent a candid look at a highly successful rural enterprise based at Burren Burren Station, and the life and times of station owner Rex White and his family, who ran 5,000 sheep on the 30,000 acre property during the wool boom.

Images like those captured by Reiss remain an important part of Australia’s history, and many are highly sought after as postcard printing subjects.

Reiss returned to photography in 1993, and his work is featured regularly at galleries around the country.