![Gordon De Lisle in 1943](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Gordon_De_Lisle_in_1943.jpg)
Gordon Franklin de Lisle (28 Feb 1923–2002)
FRPS,
FRSA
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), also known as the Royal Society of Arts, is a London-based organisation committed to finding practical solutions to social challenges. The RSA acronym is used m ...
, EFIAP (Excellence de la Federation de l' Art Photographique) was an Australian commercial photographer, lecturer in photography and gallery owner.
Training
De Lisle, who in business styled his name 'De'Lisle', was born in Melbourne 28 Feb 1923. His father Frank died when he was 11 and at 13 he left school to help support his mother Ada (who later lived in Mt Macedon)
and sister. He trained in photography from 1939 as a cadet at age fifteen on the pictorial staff of
''The Daily Telegraph'' (Sydney) and ''
The Australian Women's Weekly
''The Australian Women's Weekly'', sometimes known as simply ''The Weekly'', is an Australian monthly women's magazine published by Mercury Capital in Sydney. For many years it was the number one magazine in Australia before being outsold by ...
''.
When the war began he joined the merchant marine and participated in the evacuation of the
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capit ...
,
then at eighteen joined the
RAAF
"Through Adversity to the Stars"
, colours =
, colours_label =
, march =
, mascot =
, anniversaries = RAAF Anniversary Commemoration ...
as a radar operator, but was soon reassigned as a photographer. He flew in
Catalina flying-boats for four years on reconnaissance and torpedo-training duties, with frequent assignments to
Mitchell
Mitchell may refer to:
People
*Mitchell (surname)
*Mitchell (given name)
Places Australia
* Mitchell, Australian Capital Territory, a light-industrial estate
* Mitchell, New South Wales, a suburb of Bathurst
* Mitchell, Northern Territo ...
and
Liberator squadrons. He was engaged in 1945 to Bettie Tuck.
He found time and means during the war to write and photograph for newspapers and magazines including an article on
Marjorie Lawrence
Marjorie Florence Lawrence CBE (17 February 190713 January 1979) was an Australian soprano, particularly noted as an interpreter of Richard Wagner's operas. She was the first Metropolitan Opera soprano to perform the immolation scene in ''Gö ...
's concerts for armed service personnel.
After his demobilisation in 1945 De Lisle faced charges and a £2 fine for keeping his Colt service pistol in ignorance of Victorian regulations being at odds with Queensland's.
Professional photographer
![Cynthia De Lisle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Cynthia_De_Lisle.jpg)
After the war in 1947 De'Lisle opened his own photographic studios in the
Exhibition Buildings specialising in society portraits, industrial, aerial and automotive photography, and met, and on 20 February 1948 married after nearly a year's engagement, Merton Hall-educated model Cynthia Ferguson of
Malvern, who worked for Georges department store.
Parties associated with the engagement and wedding were well publicised and the Lord Mayor Sir Raymond Connelly attended the reception.
They travelled 1948–1949, he first to Indonesia before the couple toured Britain and Europe, then returned to Melbourne before the birth in April 1949 of their first child Jeanine (Jennie) Christina. He installed his business at 9
Collins Street in the
Grosvenor Chambers
Grosvenor Chambers, at number 9 Collins Street, Melbourne, contained the first custom-built complex of artists' studios in Australia. The construction costs were almost £6,000 and the building opened in April 1888. The owner was Charles Stewar ...
where
Wolfgang Sievers
Wolfgang Georg Sievers, AO (18 September 1913 – 7 August 2007) was an Australian photographer who specialised in architectural and industrial photography.
Early life and career
Sievers was born in Berlin, Germany. His father was Profes ...
also had a studio only doors away from their friend
Athol Shmith
Louis Athol Shmith (19 August 1914 – 21 October 1990) was an Australian studio portrait and fashion photographer and photography educator in his home city of Melbourne, Australia. He contributed to the promotion of international photograph ...
, to concentrate on commercial and fashion photography. The Department of Trade and Industry was amongst his clients.
From 1949 De Lisle was a
stringer
Stringer may refer to:
Structural elements
* Stringer (aircraft), or longeron, a strip of wood or metal to which the skin of an aircraft is fastened
* Stringer (slag), an inclusion, possibly leading to a defect, in cast metal
* Stringer (stairs), ...
for the Sydney Morning Herald magazine and newspaper group in Melbourne and was living in the wealthy suburb of Brighton in Grosvenor Court, 260 St Kilda Street. Through this franchise his picture of a tractor-driving monkey was published in
''Life'' magazine in February 1963 and, by popular demand, a whole series from the same story May 1964.
He relinquished the SMH role when in 1958/9 director
Stanley Kramer appointed him stills photographer on the motion picture
''On the Beach'', to produce thousands of production prints for the film. Subsequently, he returned to advertising photography. In 1966 he was styling his business more broadly as 'public relations' and advertised for 'PR men' using the tone-drop-out image of a pouting woman apparently speaking the words.
Publisher
In 1963 De Lisle and his wife Cynthia started a publishing company, Joey Books Pty. Ltd., and with writer
Joyce Nicholson
Joyce Nicholson (née Thorpe) (1 June 1919 – 30 January 2011) was an Australian author and business woman.
The daughter of publisher D.W. Thorpe, Nicholson was born in Melbourne and educated at Methodist Ladies' College and the University o ...
photographed and designed their first book ''Kerri and Honey'', one of a series of their children's books with the same author.
Recognition
De Lisle was a member of Melbourne Camera Club and exhibited with
Group M
Group M was an Australian association of photographers who between 1959 and 1965 mounted exhibitions that advocated for photography to be treated as art, and were formative in a revival of the medium in the nation, the awareness of Australian photo ...
in the 1960s and won international photographic contests. Among other prizes was a third in the
''U.S. Camera'' magazine international contest, from 158,000 entries, and in 1960 the magazine noted that "of 5 prizes being shipped to Australia, 4 are going to one photographer, Gordon De Lisle, a past ''U.S. Camera'' winner." His series of "Australia" posters won awards in American Art Directors' exhibitions, with one winning thirteen. A member of the Institute of Australian Photographers (IAP) he was the invited speaker at its October 1969 'Hypo' bi-annual convention in
Canberra at which he agitated for better remuneration for photographic services;
"This is a profession where a photographer with a lifetime of training and with plant worth $20,000 finishes with exactly the same money for taking a fashion photograph, processing it, retouching it, packing it and delivering a ten-by-eight print as does his model: whose plant is a bra, panties, and a pair of false eyelashes! This is a profession whose ideas are pillaged consistently and blatantly by art directors of advertising agencies; who pay the photographers’ meagre fees, with luck and after endless dispute, in five months. Above all, this is a weak-kneed, spineless profession, whose members wallow in apathy and self-adoration; while those trades and professions about them get on with the task. Do any of you really feel any concern for your image? Are you content to be made to look like bumbling congenital idiots on television? Are you content to do more and more, yet accept less and less? Are you content to slash the “ground from under your contemporaries by every known price-cutting device? And here’s something of particular importance to your wives and children! Do you know what the community thinks of you? The Sociology Department of the University of New South Wales does! It finds you enjoying precisely the same esteem in the eyes of your fellow citizens as do beekeepers, ndbank clerks..."
Educator
In 1970 De Lisle, then in his late forties, followed Ian McKenzie
as Senior Lecturer in Charge Photography in the Diploma stream of
Prahran College of Technology where he researched videotape and electronic education, hired by the vocationally-oriented graphic designer Principal Alan Warren but after suffering a severe heart attack in 1971 was replaced, by the incoming Principal Dr David Armstrong, with
Athol Shmith
Louis Athol Shmith (19 August 1914 – 21 October 1990) was an Australian studio portrait and fashion photographer and photography educator in his home city of Melbourne, Australia. He contributed to the promotion of international photograph ...
.
While at Prahran he worked on his high-contrast photomontage series on “the raped land, Australia, as it would appear to a woman who returns from the dead to discover that her country, too, is dying,” which combined his love of the Australian landscape and the female form, and was exhibited and published in 1972 in the
Ilford-funded ''Concern''.
Though he contributed to charities, and decried cruelty to sheep, and expressed sympathy for the plight of Marilyn Monroe in letters to newspapers, De Lisle had a reputation at the college for a wolfish attitude to young women, and one of De Lisle's students, and employee at his studio, was
Graham Howe
Graham Howe (born 1950) is a curator, writer, photo-historian, artist, and founder and CEO of Curatorial, Inc., a museum services organization supporting nonprofit traveling exhibitions.ArticleDouble Exposure. December 1, 2007. Accessed August 2 ...
, who regarded him "as the
Sam Haskins
Samuel Joseph Haskins (11 November 1926 – 26 November 2009), was a British photographer, born and raised in South Africa. He started his career in Johannesburg and moved to London in 1968. Haskins is best known for his contribution to in-came ...
of Australia". Victorian premier of 1955–72,
Henry Bolte
Sir Henry Edward Bolte GCMG (20 May 1908 – 4 January 1990) was an Australian politician who served as the 38th Premier of Victoria. To date he is the longest-serving Victorian premier, having been in office for over 17 consecutive years.
...
's vice squad raided his family home, confiscating his "pornography";
nudes for which he was then winning international awards, an experience which confirmed his vehemently expressed opposition to censorship, particularly of the arts. A regular writer of letters to the editor, he notoriously criticised the new National Gallery in Melbourne: "The building squats, featureless, like an obscure grey telephone exchange, floating in already scungy moats floored with lolly papers ... like a bleak penitentiary."
Later life
In 1974 the De Lisle family moved to the Sunshine Coast and established the DeLisle (now Montville) Art Gallery, first at
Buderim
Buderim ( ) is an urban centre on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. It sits on a mountain which overlooks the southern Sunshine Coast communities. In the , the urban area of Buderim had a population of 54,483.
The name "Buderim" i ...
and from later in 1974 at
Montville, renovating the colonial Manjalda homestead which in 1915 had been designed to accommodate about 35 people and was sited between St. Mary's Church of England and the School of Arts. Its croquet lawn, exotic tropical gardens with Balinese statuary, a hot tub beneath a huge frangipani tree and ocean views, proved attractive to tourists. De Lisle enjoyed the roles of hotelier and
gallerist
An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art, or acts as the intermediary between the buyers and sellers of art.
An art dealer in contemporary art typically seeks out various artists to represent, and builds relationshi ...
and adopted a relaxed and gregarious bohemian lifestyle.
He retired in 1991, and on his death in 2002 was survived by Cynthia, his wife of 54 years, his daughter Jennie, sons Rodney, and artist Christopher, who has continued to operate the gallery, and eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Another son, James, died in 1997.
Publications
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Collections
* National Library of Australia; 674 images
* National Archives of Australia, 300+ images
Gallery of De Lisle 1950s photographs
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:De Lisle, Gordon
1923 births
2002 deaths
Australian photographers
Australian educators
Fellows of the Royal Photographic Society
Photographers from Melbourne
Australian commercial artists