Louis Athol-Shmith was an Australian photographer. Working in all formats, Athol-Shmith created multimedia images as well as portraits, fashion photos and photo-reportage. He contributed to the promotion of international photography within Australia as much as to the fostering of Australian photography in the world scene.
Background
Louis Athol-Shmith was born in 1914 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He was born into a cultured middle-class family, the youngest of three children of Harry Wolf Shmith, manufacturing chemist and accomplished pianist, and his wife Genetta (nee Epstein), both born in England. Shmith played piano and vibraphone and considered music as a possible career. His father gave him a camera as a teenager and what was a hobby became a profession in his late teens when Shmith, who had an interest in theatre and played at charity performances, was asked to take the publicity photographs and stills for a show.
Education
Louis Athol-Shmith was self-taught person.
Career
Louis Athol-Shmith, supported by his family, established a studio in St Kilda. For the first five years he specialised in theatre work and society and wedding portraits through which he first made his reputation. But his professional break through had come in the early 1930s when he gained the contract to take portraits of visiting celebrities for the newly formed Australian Broadcasting Commission. Shmith’s work expanded to include a range of commercial advertising and illustration and appeared in local society magazines. At the age of just 19 he was appointed Vice-Regal Photographer in Melbourne. The outbreak of the Second World War interrupted the studio work Shmith. When he attempted to enlist, he failed the medical examination, but he conducted photographic analyses for the army, including the interpretation of aerials of the American landing in Italy. His studio produced portrait photographs of hundreds of servicewomen and men, including those of many Americans on leave in Melbourne.After World War II Shmith embraced the "New Look" and the spirit of post-war recovery in fashion illustration, becoming the most respected professional in the field in Australia. In 1968 he founded the Department of Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1971, he left his studio to partner John Cato to take on a new role as head of the Photography Department at Prahran College of Advanced Education in Australia.
The photographer was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London. In 1948, he became a Fellow of RPS and a member of the Federation Internationale de l'Art Photographique (FIAP) in France.
Personality
Louis Athol-Shmith was urbane, charming and witty and also madcap. Less concerned with gravitas and the moral exemplar of "greatness" of his many famous sitters and celebrated models, his pictures celebrated their style and creative spirit.
Interests
Cecil Beaton, Edward Steichen, George Hurrell
Connections
On 11 September 1939, Shmith married Yvonne Pearl Slater. The couple divorced in 1948. From 1948 to 1958, he was married to fashion model 'Bambi' (Patricia Tuckwell, sister of Barry Tuckwell and future wife of Lord Harewood, 1st cousin to Queen Elizabeth II). They were married on 7 July 1948 in Melbourne. Their son Michael Shmith, a senior writer with The Age newspaper was born on the first anniversary of their marriage, 7 July 1949. The couple divorced in 1958. Shmith's third wife was divorcee Paule Grant Hay (nee Paulus), a former mannequin for Christian Dior in Paris. They married in 1967.