James Austin (photographer)

James Austin (photographer)

Photograph by Pauline Austin
Born June 4, 1940
Melbourne, Australia
Residence France
Alma mater Lycée Lakanal, Paris; Manchester Grammar School; Jesus College, Cambridge; Courtauld Institute,[1]
Occupation Fine-art and architectural photographer
Spouse(s) Pauline Jeannette (née Aten)[1]

James Austin (born 4 June 1940) is an Australian fine-art and architectural photographer.

Biography

James Lucien Ashurst Austin was born in Melbourne, Australia, the eldest son of Professor Lloyd James Austin (1915–1994) and of Jeanne-Françoise (née Guérin).[2] He is the older brother of the late Colin Austin (1941–2010), the scholar of ancient Greek.[3] After studying architecture and fine art at Jesus College, Cambridge, he continued his education at the Courtauld Institute, London.[4]

He then travelled widely in France and Italy as a freelance photographer building up a library of photographs now in use worldwide in art history archives and numerous publications. Among his early clients were the Bollingen Foundation in New York and Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, for whom he provided photographs for twenty volumes of the Buildings of England series.[1][5] He was Ben Nicholson’s personal photographer for the last ten years of the painter’s life.[1]

Thomas Jekyll: Architect and Designer, 1827–1881
by Susan Weber Soros and Catherine Arbuthnott
Book jacket photograph by James Austin

He went back to work at the Courtauld Institute for twelve years, travelling extensively around Europe to photograph historic architecture and sculpture for the Conway Library at the Courtauld.[6] On his retirement he transferred his collection of negatives of architectural and sculptural subjects to the Conway Library.

He returned to freelance work in 1985, when he was commissioned to take all the photographs for the catalogue of the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection. His career broadened to encompass the photography of fine art. He worked for the National Trust, English Heritage, the Crafts Council, the Tate Gallery, Kettle's Yard in Cambridge and numerous other institutions, architects, artists, craftsmen and collectors.[1][4] He continued working for the Sainsbury collection – on several exhibition catalogues and photographing new acquisitions – right up to his retirement in April 2004, keeping a studio and darkroom at Wysing Arts Centre from 1997 until his retirement.

In his review of the book Antique Woodworking Tools in which James Austin published more than 1,500 photographs, Mark Bridge wrote in Antiques Trade Gazette: "[James Austin] has managed to capture the elusive qualities of balance, texture and patina which make the finest tools a pleasure to handle, frequently lifting them into the realm of folk art".[7]

Exhibition

Wingfield Barns Arts Centre, Eye, Suffolk: solo exhibition of specially commissioned photographs, summer 2002

Honours

James Austin was a Fellow of the British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP) from 1977 to 1991.

Bibliography

Antique Woodworking Tools by David R. Russell.
Book jacket showing an array of Norris planes
Photograph by James Austin

Books for which James Austin did all, most or many of the photographs:

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Debrett's People of Today. London: Debrett's Ltd. 1991. ISBN 978-1-870520-04-1.
  2. Professor Lloyd Austin's obituary in the Independent.
  3. Colin Austin's obituary in the Guardian.
  4. 4.0 4.1 Jacket blurb: Russell, David R. (2010). Antique Woodworking Tools. Cambridge: John Adamson. ISBN 978-1-898565-05-5.
  5. The revised second edition of the Lincolnshire volume featured Austin's colour photographs on the cover; in his acknowledgements Nicholas Antram, the book's editor, singled out James Austin "for the professionalism and understanding with which he executed commissions undertaken for this volume" (Pevsner, Nikolaus, and John Harris [1989]. Lincolnshire London: Penguin ISBN 978-0-14-071027-4, Preface, p. 19).
  6. James Austin's photographs for the Courtauld on line.
  7. Mark Bridge, "The young apprentice cabinetmaker who became a connoisseur", Antiques Trade Gazette, October 22, 2011, p. 19.

External links