Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

As a child growing up in 1960s Perth, Lisa Coleman (pictured above) would watch  Wimbledon on TV hoping to catch a glimpse of her great-uncle in the tennis club press box. Norman Hall, born in Narrogin, Western Australia, in 1910, was the picture editor of The Times of London and could sometimes be seen courtside. The young Lisa knew little about him other than that he was on TV and that, on occasional visits to Australia, he would arrive in a heavy overcoat and photograph the family with their pet kangaroo. It was 30 years later, following a chance encounter with a Czech

photographer, that Coleman, by  then a photographer herself, discovered that her uncle was an important figure in the world of press photography and a contemporary of some of the greatest, among them Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Rodger, two of the founders of  the Magnum photo agency. Today, Coleman is a lecturer in the Faculty of Built Environment, running a cross-disciplinary photomedia course which teaches using the camera as a visual research tool. She is also creating  a history of her uncle’s little-known contribution to photography’s  use in modern newspapers, books and galleries. Hall learned about the newspaper business on his family-owned Narrogin Observer in WA. After serving as a pilot in World War II, he left Australia

for London, where he edited Photography magazine and yearbook,

and the British Journal of Photography, before becoming picture editor

of The Times in 1962. During his tenure he changed the use of photographs in the paper, introducing photo essays and large display images, and commissioning and mentoring talented newcomers. “Norman Hall was a pioneer. There are many books and documentaries celebrating the photographer but few that honour the picture editor’s contribution to the history of photography,” Coleman says. Coleman’s quest to find out about Hall began accidentally in the mid-90s, when she went to Stills Gallery in inner-Sydney Paddington, hoping to meet noted Czech photographer Markéta Luskacová, who was staging an exhibition. Coleman had studied architecture and planning at UNSW, then worked at ANU’s Urban Research Unit. She later became active in housing and social issues, working with the Tenants’ Union and Shelter NSW. Her interest in photography was sparked by the realisation that images – essential in documenting current affairs – were also powerful in presenting research findings. At the gallery, Coleman was asked if she might drive Luskacová to the University of Western Sydney, some 50km away, where she was to give a lecture. During the drive, conversation ranged over Luskacová’s work in Europe. When talk turned to London, Coleman mentioned her great-uncle who had worked on The Times. The response was startling. “Luskacová said: ‘I was told to go and see him [Hall] by Peter Turner at Creative Camera magazine. When I asked who he was, Peter told me he was the Pope of British photography.’ ” So began a detective mission. In 2005, after winning the UNSW Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence, Coleman secured a Churchill Fellowship to do research in the UK, followed by grants to travel to Europe. In 2010 she went to the US and then back to WA. Through visiting dozens of photo archives and museums and interviewing some of the most influential photographers of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, she built a picture of her great-uncle’s work in nurturing talent and helping to change photography from disposable medium to collectable art form. Phillip Jones Griffiths, who produced some of the most important photojournalism of the Vietnam War, told Coleman: “Norman Hall changed the course of photographic history in Britain. Through the Photography magazine and yearbook he brought to us international photography, the likes of William Klein, Paul Strand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, at a time when British photography was pictorial and fluffy kittens.” Coleman is now working on a book and documentary about Hall’s work. “When I try to condense what he did it’s hard because it’s so huge, but this is a story about a remarkable career that must be told,” she says. Photography became an art form with the help of Australian picture editor Norman Hall. Decades on, Lisa Coleman traces her great-uncle’s legacy. Peter Trute reports. 

http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/documents/uniken_spring2011.pdf