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| Tom Hutchins | |
| Matakana Pictures Exhibitions Artists | Robert (“Tom”) Hutchins was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1921, the first son of a waterside worker, who took his family to Auckland in 1923. Educated at Auckland Grammar School, Tom Hutchins trained as a primary teacher and taught for one year. Inspired by documentary films, and the photojournalism of Picture Post and Life, he joined the New Zealand Herald as a cadet photographer at the end of 1941. A pacifist, he later served a brief prison sentence for his beliefs. Determined to be a photojournalist, he enrolled for a Diploma in Journalism at the University of Auckland and while working for the Christchurch photographers Green & Hahn, made the first of his photograph to be accepted by Life magazine; a dramatic bird’s eye view of the fire that destroyed Ballantyne’s department store in Christchurch on 18 November 1947. While working for the New Zealand Herald and later the Auckland Star, for which he was Chief Photographer from 1952-56, he joined the New York based Black Star picture agency and regularly submitted work to Life. Under Paul Savage, the Auckland Star’s enlightened picture editor, the newspaper encouraged a photojournalistic approach in the mid-fifties by setting aside page seven as a regular picture page. The photographers, who then included Peter Bush, Grahame McKechnie, Harold Paton, and Hutchins were delighted. They went beyond single news pictures to present small essays on such diverse themes as army manoeuvres, hydro electricity, and the Girl Guides. Hutchins’ social concern, as a Socialist, and his knowledge of classic documentary and photojournalistic work is evident in his exemplary two-part essay on Maori housing in Auckland at that time. While free-lancing from Auckland and in New South Wales, where he lived with his family from 1960-64, he first studied social anthropology at Sydney University, then tutored in sociology at the University of New England in Armidale. A new era for photography in New Zealand was heralded when Tom Hutchins returned to Auckland in 1965 to take up a position as the first full-time lecturer in photography and film at the University of Auckland. Long convinced of the need for university recognition of the camera arts, he had for some years agitated to establish photography as a full option for fine arts students. In 1970 Max Oettli joined him, as the first technical instructor in photography and John B. Turner became the second lecturer in 1971. While Hutchins’ own photography and film-making is little-known today, due largely to his own reticence, his influence as a teacher (1965-80) and critic has been profound. Text © William Main and John B. Turner, from New Zealand Photography from the 1840s to the Present, PhotoForum Inc., Auckland, New Zealand, 1993. Quoted with permission, 2005. |
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Tom Hutchins 1. Pointing the way into the foothills, Tianshan Mountains, Xinjiang, China 1956. |
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Tom Hutchins 2. Social dancing, truck industry workers, Saturday night Changchun, China 1956. |
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Tom Hutchins 3. Production training, steel rolling mill, Anshan, China 1956. Price: $1200 |
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Tom Hutchins 4. Building the Gobi Desert line, towards Yumen, China 1956. Price: $1200 |
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