Jack Cato
| Jack Cato | |
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Athol Shmith, Jack Cato, circa 1955. National Library of Australia, Ref.# vn59459 © the Estate of Athol Shmith, Courtesy Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art
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| Born |
4 April 1889 Launceston, Tasmania, Australia |
| Died | 14 August 1971 (aged 85) Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Other names | John Cyril Cato |
| Occupation | Photographer and Author |
| Known for | author; The Story of the Camera in Australia |
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John Cyril "Jack" Cato, F.R.P.S. (4 April 1889 – 14 August 1971) was a significant Australian portrait photographer in the Pictorialist style, operating in the first half of the twentieth century. He was the author of the first history of Australian photography; The Story of the Camera in Australia (1955)
John Cyril (Jack) Cato (1889-1971), photographer, was born on 4 April 1889 at Launceston, Tasmania, son of Albert Cox Cato, salesman, and his wife Caroline Louise, née Morgan. At the age of 12 years he did an apprenticeship, and studied arts in night school. His father arranged for him to have lessons from a friend who was a metallurgist at Queenstown, where he learnt the properties of metals in photography.John Watt Beattie, a Scottish landscape photographer and also the son of a photographer, introduced young Jack to the medium in 1896. He was further trained in art by Lucien Deschaineux at Launceston Technical School. From 1901 Cato worked under Percy Whitelaw and John Andrew, both local portrait photographers.
In 1906, aged 17, Cato joined Beattie in his Hobart premises and set up his own studio. Later he applied to be official photographer to (Sir) Douglas Mawson's 1911 Australasian Antarctic Expedition. However, Mawson passed him up, and Henri Mallard, in favour of Frank Hurley. Cato travelled that year in Europe finding work with photographers in London, among them H. Walter Barnett, the fashionable society and vice-regal portraitist, and theatre photographer Claude Harris. Through the latter, and with encouragement from Dame Nellie Melba, he pursued freelance work in the theatrical world. Having contracted tuberculosis and, seeking the relief of a warm climate, Cato left England in 1914 to photograph on the expeditions in Rhodesia of Professor Cory of Grahamstown University. He enlisted for war service in South Africa. The anthropological photography earned him a fellowship (1917) of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain.
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