McCLURE, KEITH

"The Light That Failed (Marie McClure)" (c.1940)
silver gelatin photograph
30 x 26cm
signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Keith Edward McClure was a respected, award-winning Australian Photographer. Little is known about this photographer, but it is clear he was part of the new generation of art-portrait photographers of the 1930s & 1940s in Australia, pioneered by the legendary, Max Dupain. In fact, McClure exhibited alongside Dupain as part of the Adelaide Camera Club, in the Royal Society of Arts in 1945 (the first International Adelaide Salon), where both won bronze plaques for their landscape photographs. McClure was a photographer of landscapes in the pictorial style. Although he was also known to produce studio-based, heavily contrasted & stylised, black & white commissions, which were fashionable during that era; similar to the work of Athol-Shmith & Dupain. This original silver gelatin was produced out of his Clovelly studio. He exhibited in Australia and Internationally, particularly as part of the Sydney Miniature Camera Group, of which he was both the President and Secretary for during the 1940s. He married Marie McClure (nee Hindwood), who was also a handy photographer. McClure also lectured regularly at Photographic Societies around Australia, won several awards and was mentioned regularly in the Australasian Photo Review (A.P.R), one of Australia's leading photography magazines.