Background
His father left the family when Caddy was 17 and the family was living in Bondi.
His father left the family when Caddy was 17 and the family was living in Bondi.
Caddy emerged as a significant photographer of social activities on Bondi Beach in his day, only when hundreds of his photographs were re-discovered in 2007, among them the only existing documentation of an historic beach acrobatic club Born in Melbourne, Victoria, Caddy moved with his family to Sydney in 1929 when he was 15. The young Caddy found a job as a paper pattern cutter for the Australian Home Journal in 1936, taking up photography and competitive dancing in his spare time.
Both activities came to an end when he enlisted in the army.
The plates turned out to be a rare collection of high-grade work with a unique subject and the photographer, a contemporary of iconic Australian photographer, Max Dupain. Within a year an exhibition (November 2008 - February 2009) at the Library was organised by the curator of photography, Alan Davies.
Davies says that Caddy"s photographs provide a unique body of work. Caddy was a people-oriented person which shows in his photographs compared with his contemporary, Dupain whose work focuses on the aesthetics of the scene.
Beachobatics
Apart from documenting fashions and scenes, many of the photographs show the way people entertained themselves on Bondi Beach in the 1930s.
The photographs cover the period from 1936 to 1941 and are the only known record of the Waverley Men"s Gymnastic Club (formed 1921) when they took their "beachobatics" to Bondi where the group of both men and women constructed ground pyramids of up to 10 people. Beachobatics died out after the Second World War and the Caddy photographs remain the chief resource for documents of the activities. A presentation of photographs entitled Bondi Jitterbug: George Caddy And His Camera opened in January 2009, at the State Library of NSW.
In the army, Caddy was stationed near Brisbane as a gunner in an anti-aircraft battery.
When he returned to civilian life in 1946, he packed away the negatives and did not resume his photographic or dancing activities.
Caddy died in Maroubra in 1983.
From 1936 until 1941 he spent most weekends down at the beach, photographing his friends who were members of a local gym and becoming known as a dancer with the nickname "The Bondi Jitterbug". The only surviving member of the club is Charlie Lusty.