Marcia Clark photographs, personal papers and other material

fonds

1913-1997

Graphic Materials, Photographs, Moving Images, Drawings, Textual Records

9650123

14 albums (3,119 photographic prints) - gelatin silver, black and white
286 photographic prints - some colour
411 slides - 36 mm - colour
779 negatives - some colour
41 drawings (1 box) - pencil
0.32 metres of textual material (2 boxes)
16 film reels - 8 mm and 16 mm - colour

Marcia Adrienne May Clark (1913-2001), daughter of Henry Marcus Clark, founder of the homewares company Marcus Clark & Co, and photographer whose work documented Sydney's Social scene in the 1920s and 1930s. Throughout the 1940s and 50s Marcia produced artistic photographs for which she won numerous awards but which have not previously appeared in literature about female photographers in Australia.

In the 1930s Marcia appeared in local newspaper columns like the Truth’s ‘Jottings of a Lady About Town’ and the Daily Herald’s ‘The Life of Sydney’. In 1935 she accompanied the actress Sadie Bedford on her tour around Sydney and hosted international opera and ballet stars at her home in Point Piper. Marcia also accompanied Miss Hélène Kirsova, a famous Russian ballerina on her travels in Australia and New Zealand.

When war broke out in 1939, Marcia volunteered with the Women’s Emergency Signal Corps (WESC), founded by her friend Florence Violet McKenzie. This group trained servicemen in radio communications and by the end of the war had trained around 12,000 recruits, mainly airmen

Marcia was a member of a number of NSW and National photographic clubs and societies. Commendations and examples of her work were published in the Australian Photo Review during the 1940s. In 1948 Marcia became a member of the Australian Portfolio Photographic Society (APPS) and from 1961 to 1997 she was Secretary of ‘Circle Two’ of the APPS.

Marcia was an early adopter of colour Kodachrome film. Kodachrome was a brand name for a non-substantive, colour reversal film introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1935. For most of her life, Marcia developed and printed her photographs in purpose-built darkrooms at her various houses. In 1969 she was awarded the ‘print of the year’ prize by the APPS for her study of a tree near Lake George. The January 1956 edition of the Australian Photo Review praised her photograph ‘Man at Work’ for its good selective ability as well as being an excellent technical rendering of tones.

Reference
Compiled from the Library’s acquisition file

This collection covers Marcia's involvement in Sydney’s social scene in the 1920s and 1930s through to her photographic work in the 1940s and 1950s.

SERIES 1: Photographs predominately by Marcia Clark
SERIES 2: Caricature drawings relating to theatre and costume by Marcia Clark
SERIES 3: Personal papers and notebooks
SERIES 4: Slides chiefly views and scenes in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory
SERIES 5: Motion picture film footage relating to Women's Emergency Signalling Corps activities, theatre performances and family by Marcia Clark

This collection is arranged into five series by format