John Cato

• Name — John Chester Cato • Born — 2 November 1926 • Birthplace — Hobart, Tasmania, Australia • Died — 30 January 2011 (aged 84) • Place of death — Bonbeach, Victoria, Australia • Spouse — Dawn Cato (m. 7 October 1950) • Relatives — Jack Cato (father) • Occupation — Photographer and teacher

• Illustration — John Cato and fiancee, Dawn Cadwallader John Chester Cato was born on November 2, 1926, in Hobart, Tasmania, to Mary Booth and John (Jack) Cato. His career in photography started at the age of 12 as an apprentice to his father, Jack Cato. Returning in 1946 after service in the Pacific for the Royal Australian Navy during WW2, Cato worked as a self-employed photographer before being hired by The Argus as a press photographer in 1947. Cato held that position until 1950 when he became a photographer and assistant for Athol Shmith Pty Ltd. in the Rue de la Paix building at 125 Collins Street, Melbourne. He married Dawn Helen Cadwallader of Brighton at the register at St. Mary's Church of England, East Caulfield, in October that year. Their eldest son, also John, was born in 1952. During this period he undertook research for his father Jack on the latter's The Story of the Camera in Australia published in 1955. That year, Cato and Shmith became business partners and started Athol Shmith–John Cato Pty Ltd. When the MoMA's The Family of Man exhibition came to Melbourne's Preston Motors Show Room on February 23, 1959, Cato visited the show several times and was inspired by its humanist themes and optimism. • Illustration — Elizabeth Durack, 1961, by John Cato The partners' business was prospering and at times employed 26 staff and hired other photographers including Norman Ikin and Hans Hasenpflug to cope with the volume of business. By 1958 they were known so well by the public that their portraits could be used to endorse a television brand in its advertising. Cato's clients included U.S.P. Benson Pty. Ltd., Worth Hosiery, Myer, Hammersley Iron Pty Ltd, The Australian Ballet, Southern Cross Hotel and General Motors, and his fashion photography occupied full pages of newspapers and magazines. Nevertheless Cato moved away from commercial photography in 1974 after experiencing what he described as "a kind of menopause". Shortly after leaving his partnership with Athol Shmith, Cato began his teaching career and started to focus on fine art photography. Cato was one of the first photographers in Melbourne to give up their commercial practice to become a fine art photographer.

Earth Song was Cato's first collection of personal work to be exhibited. This series consisted of 52 colour photographs sequenced in a way that allowed the work to be recognised as individual photographs and as part of an overall concept. Cato's use of musical analogies can be seen in the sequencing of Earth Song, described as using "melodic line and symphonic form as its metaphoric basis". Cato's Earth Song was included at the National Gallery of Victoria over 12–31 October 1971 as part of the Frontiers exhibition of six photographers who were exploring the idea of the medium as an art form with Peter Medlen, Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski, Mark Strizic and John Wilkins. The Department of Foreign Affairs toured the exhibition through Manila, Seoul, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Bangkok. Cato's sequence went on to Horsham Art Gallery 14 December 1974 – 30 January 1975 for his first solo exhibition.

For Cato's first photographic essay described as such, he completed five black and white photo sequences between 1971 and 1979. In each sequence, Cato explored the expression of nature and creation, which he saw as the physical representation of his own life experiences and philosophy. • Series title — Number of photographs — Produced between • Tree – A Journey — 18 images — 1971–1973 • Petroglyphs — 14 images — 1971–1973 • Seawind — 14 images — 1971–1975 • Proteus — 18 images — 1974–1977 • Waterway — 16 images — 1974–1979

In the 1982 assessment of Age critic Geoff Strong, Essay 2 is the "stuff of social comment" compared to other work, and focuses on "the sublimation of Aboriginal culture by Europeans". This series explores the idea of destruction of culture, spirituality and physicality using duality to represent the idea photographically. • Series title — Number of photographs — Produced between • Alcheringa — 11 images — 1978–1981 • Broken Spears — 11 images — 1978–1983 • Mantracks — 22 images (in pairs) — 1978–1983

Double Concerto was Cato's final photo essay. This photo essay was published under the deliberately androgynous 'Everyman' names Pat Noone and Chris Noone, two identities that Cato created to "visualise alternative conditions within himself". Each sequence, one monochrome single images and the other in full colour montages, explored how individual people can witness and experience the world very differently from each other. This series was exhibited as Cato's "farewell show" at Luba Bilu Gallery in Greville St. Prahran on his retirement from teaching. • Series title — Number of photographs — Produced between • Pat Noone — 30 images — 1984–1990 • Chris Noone — 11 images — 1985–1991

Cato began his teaching career in 1974 at Prahran College of Advanced Education which became known as Melbourne's most innovative art school, where he worked full-time. In 1975 however, government funding ended with Whitlam's dismissal. He took up a position at Roger Hayne's newly established Impact School of Photography before being again offered work at Prahran later in 1975. Until 1979 Cato taught part-time and then took over as Head of Photography when Athol Shmith retired due to ill health in 1980, and remained in the role until the last year of Art & Design at Prahran, 1991 when at 65 he was forced, reluctantly, to retire. Between 1977 and 1979 Cato also contributed to the foundation of Photography Studies College from the Impact school, and concurrently lectured there until becoming full-time head of the photography department at Prahran. Cato was a passionate and generous teacher and was highly regarded by his students and peers. He described himself as being "duty bound" to share his experience with students and colleagues, and they benefitted from his close knowledge of the history of Australian photography attained as he assisted his father in research for The Story of the Camera in Australia, and in meeting its protagonists. Many of Cato's past students have gone on to hold well regarded positions in the photography, art and education fields and as Deborah Ely notes "the department produced some of the country's most acclaimed practitioners", including Bill Henson, Carol Jerrems, Steve Lojewski, Rozalind Drummond, Janina Green, Andrew Chapman, Phil Quirk, Jacqueline Mitelman, Polly Borland, Susan Fereday, Robert Ashton, Peter Milne, Leonie Reisberg, Paul Torcello, Stephen Wickham, Kate Williams, daughter of artist Fred Williams, and Christopher Koller among others. Henson, who regarded Cato as "very generous and enthusiastic", was inspired by his use of musical analogies, which Henson later incorporated in his own work. Courtney Pedersen who has since become a senior academic, describes her learning from Cato as 'formative'. Paul Cox, one of Cato's colleagues at Prahran College of Advanced Education, remarked that while the staff of Cato's department were photographers, none of them were qualified teachers; "Can you imagine that happening today? … At Prahran, teachers and students learnt from each other. It was an exchange." Cato preferred to use large and medium format cameras in his own work for the higher resolution that they offered and when taking students on excursions, he insisted they use the same instead of 35mm SLR cameras that they more commonly used, so that the more technical view camera would force students to think before they pressed the shutter and pre-visualise their photograph, rather than to 'blaze away' with expendable roll film. Cato strongly believed in photography as a form of individualised expressionism, a view that was shared and supported by Athol Shmith, who was one of the first to teach photography as a creative course in the late 1960s. Associate Professor Noel Hutchinson dedicated the Prahran Fine Art Graduate Show 1991 catalogue 'in memoriam' to Cato in recognition of his retirement. In the following year Prahran College was subsumed into the Victorian College of the Arts, formerly the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, and Christopher Koller, one of Cato's former students, was made head of its photography department, inheriting his mentor's belief in the importance of conceptualisation and previsualisation in the medium.

Cato exhibited his work with other photographers in 30 group exhibitions until 2003, the earliest being in 1964 at Blaxland Gallery in Sydney, and in 20 solo exhibitions in Australian and international galleries before his death in 2011. The 1973 Frontiers at the NGV with Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski, Mark Strizic, Peter Medlen and John Wilkins toured to the Australian Embassy in Bangkok, June 27– July 5 and showed at Abraxas Gallery, Manuka, in December 1974 with Sue Ford, Les Gray and Mark Strizic. Cato's first solo exhibition was held at Horsham Regional Art Gallery (Victoria, Australia) in 1975, with subsequent solo exhibitions being held every few years up until 2004. Cato's work is held in numerous gallery collections across Australia including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Albury Regional Art Gallery, Deakin University, Tasmanian Art Gallery and Melbourne State College. In addition to Australian galleries, Cato's work is also held in collections in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and Schmidtbank Weiden in Germany. Paul Cox and Bryan Gracey, colleagues at Prahran College, co-curated the first retrospective of Cato's black and white landscape photographs taken between 1971 and 1991 which they exhibited at the 2013 Ballarat International Foto Biennale, both believing that Cato's work deserves to be better recognised. Paul Cox commented; "John will ride a high wave. He belongs in the National Gallery, in the high echelons and I think this is a very wonderful first step."

Aside from staging his own exhibitions, Cato was instrumental in the acceptance of photography into the mainstream art establishment. After considerable lobbying by Shmith and others a separate Department of Photography had been established at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne. Cato served on an advisory group formed in 1969 during the establishment of the gallery's new Photography Department and oversaw the appointment of the first curator of photography in Australia, Jennie Boddington in 1972.

Over his career, Cato was active in national and international networking amongst the photographic and art education fields. He filled a number of honorary roles including one that was a request by Prahran graduates Euan McGillivray, the Curator of Photography at the Science Museum of Victoria, and Matthew Nickson, who worked at the Photography Department at RMIT, to chair the landmark conference 'Working Papers On Photography' (WOPOP) Australian Photography Conference, held at Prahran College of Advanced Education, Melbourne, from 19–21 September 1980. • 1969–76 Photography Advisor, National Gallery of Victoria • 1976 Consultant for Grant Selection, Australia Council • 1977–80 Executive Council, Australian Centre for Photography • 1977–87 Honours Executive and Juror, Institute of Australian Photography • 1978–79 Course Advisor, Victorian College of the Arts • 1978–82 International Advisory Board, History of Photography (Pennsylvania State University) • 1979 Executive Council, Australian Photography Educational Council • 1980 Course Advisor, Bendigo College of Advanced Education • 1980–82 Advisor, City of Waverley Art Collection • 1981 Chairman, Australian Photography Education Council • 1982 Chairman, WOPOP Photography Conference • 1981–91 Course Advisor and External Assessor, Photography Studies College, Melbourne • 1982 Researcher and curator 'Jack Cato' a Retrospective Exhibition • 1985–86 Foundation Member and Steering Committee, and Design, Victoria College Victoria Centre for Photography • 1987–89 Advisory Board, Victorian Centre for Photography

Cato was honoured with numerous awards including Fellow at the Australian Institute of Professional Photographers (1991) and Honorary Doctor of Arts at RMIT University (1999). He was also awarded two grants, one a Visual Arts Board Travel Grant in 1985 and the other a Research and Development Grant from Victoria College in 1990. • 1962 Associate Australian Institute of Photography • 1978 Honorary Fellow, Australian Institute of Photography • 1985 $2,000 Visual Arts Board Travel Grant, towards airfare to exhibit work in Bayreuth, West Germany • 1990 Research and Development Grant, Victoria College • 1991 Fellow, Australian Institute of Professional Photography • 1999 Honorary Doctor of Arts, RMIT University