Horse racing and high fashion have always enjoyed a close association, and there was one professional image maker who has a special link to Flemington in more ways than one. Athol Shmith (1914-1990), one of Australia’s leading portrait, fashion, and advertising photographers, deftly chronicled the style and glamour of Melbourne society during a successful career that spanned decades.
Shmith established his photography business in the Rue de la Paix building in the ‘Paris End’ of Collins Street, Melbourne, in 1939, and it soon became a glamorous local landmark. This was very much the early days of fashion and photography, as many of the popular magazines and periodicals mostly featured the latest fashions, shoes, and hat styles in illustrative form, and tended to look to Britain and Europe for trends, rather than home.
At the time, very few professional models were available, as modelling was not yet considered a respectable pursuit, so the resourceful Shmith decided to recruit attractive young ladies from leading Melbourne families.
By establishing this connection between high society and modelling, he legitimised fashion photography, and throughout the 1940s he honed his elegant style, precisely lit, sophisticated black-and-white portraiture, often based in the studio. This glamorous, stylistically modern approach was not dissimilar to work being produced by photographers overseas such as George Hurrell, Cecil Beaton and Richard Avedon and helped to put Australian fashion photography well and truly on the map.
His subject matter ranged from society weddings and debutantes’ balls to portraits of visiting celebrities such as Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, as well as astonishing portraits of Melbourne beauties such as model and violinist, the wasp-waisted Patricia ‘Bambi’ Tuckwell (who later became his second wife).
Shmith steadily established a portfolio of outstanding advertising and editorial work and his innate appreciation of elegance and beauty invariably led him to racehorses and the track.
Remarkably, in 1945, he co-developed the ‘Camera Graph’ continuous-flow film system, more commonly known as the ‘Photo-Finish’ camera, which revolutionised horse racing.
This connection with fashion, photography, racing and indeed Flemington, was forever forged.
Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, photographers like Shmith, Henry Talbot (and even a young Helmut Newton who shared a studio with Talbot in 353 Flinders Lane) continued to shape the face of fashion and style in Australia, and a new female confidence emerged. Women began to turn to homegrown designers and began to take their fashion and beauty clues from local society style setters.
Flemington provided a wonderful opportunity for racegoers and fashion lovers to show off current styles, beginning when Archer first won the Melbourne Cup in 1861.
The Fashions on the Field competition debuted in 1962, and was an instant success, helping women and designers to push boundaries, and encouraging the participants to be bold and confident with their fashion choices.
Athol Shmith coincidentally photographed several of the early competition winners, and his stunning images are not only important fashion references, but they also capture some of the great Australian beauties of that time.
