Poignant, Axel (1906-86), Anglo-Swedish photographer, active for 30 years in Australia. Poignant was both a fine portraitist and a master of the photo-story. An old man kangaroo or the violinist Yehudi Menuhin equally yielded their essential selves to his camera. His formative years—the 1930s—were in Perth, Western Australia, where he adopted the 35 mm Leica in the struggle to achieve a form of visual representation that would express his growing social awareness. It was on his first journey to the far outback, along the Canning Stock Route in 1942 (when he joined a work party to repair the wells), that sensibilities and skills coalesced in a singular directness of vision. Two Aboriginal portraits—a young mother and baby, and a young stockman—have been singled out for their humanity of vision. After the Second World War he worked first on Harry Watt's film The Overlanders, then as cinematographer on Namatjira the Painter for the Commonwealth Film Division. His most significant work was a self-generated assignment to photograph an Aboriginal community, Arnhem Land (1952). One outcome was a children's picture story (1956) republished in 1972 as Bush Walkabout, regarded as a path-breaking example of the genre. Not until 40 years later when his wife Roslyn returned to the same area with the photographs was a record of the experience published, as Encounter at Nagalarramba (1996). Other photographic books included The Improbable Kangaroo and Other Australian Animals (1965), and the children's picture stories Kaleku (1972), made in the Highlands of New Guinea, and Children of Oropiru (1976), in Raiatea, Polynesia.
— Roslyn Poignant
Bibliography
- Axel Poignant: Photographs 1922-1980 (1982)
