This week, Dr Kate talks about the vast collection of photographs included in the archives of notable Fremantle photographer and much loved community figure Abraham “Izzy” Orloff, who captured Perth throughout the interwar years as a professional photographer working in a range of styles and across many different subjects.
Abraham “Izzy” Orloff was born was born in 1891 in the Ukraine. In 1903 he moved with his family to Palestine, where he became a carriage builder. He migrated to Western Australia, arriving at Fremantle on 13 January 1912, and found employment building coaches and sulkies, as a pedlar, and then canvassing for photographic enlargements. He later worked in the local Censorship Office, Australian Military Forces, translating letters from Russian, Yiddish and German. In 1920 he travelled to Paris, where he was employed at the workshops of Editions Photographiques Félix.
Back in Perth, Orloff worked at Dease Studios in Barrack Street; he also developed films for customers. In 1922 he set up his own business, La Tosca Studios, at North Fremantle. He married Minnie Rose, a Polish-born draper on 20 August 1929 at the Synagogue, Bourke Street, Melbourne.
Specialising in portraits and group photographs, Orloff also supplied passport and identification pictures, took and sold candid shots at dance halls, and provided the Sunday Times with news photographs. He continued to work as a professional photographer at Fremantle until the 1960s.
Survived by his wife Minnie, Izzy Orloff died on 2 June 1981 at Yokine and was buried in Karrakatta cemetery.
As a professional photographer working in Perth across three decades of the first half of the 20th century, Izzy Orloff amassed a significant collection of photographic images that depict the life of the state at a period of great social upheaval, as well as a time when documentation of this kind was expensive to produce. Although he worked as a portrait artist and worked for the press, Orloff was arguably best known for his streetscapes, for which he used a large format camera to produce high quality panoramic images. Working in Fremantle he also captured many maritime arrivals, including this image of the HMS Hood arriving in the harbour in 1924.
However, as a portrait artist and a photographer used to capturing large groups, Orloff also had an exceptional eye for human subjects, and whilst he was able to capture buildings, streetscapes and other structures and events such as maritime arrivals with distinctive compositional focus and clarity of image, many of his most captivating images are human subjects captured within these public spaces. This image of the Boans Tea Rooms is an incredible snapshot of a well-remembered institution that captures the social fabric of Perth’s inter-war years.
Orloff’s photographs provide a unique historical lens into the public and private lives of interwar Fremantle. His images capture a rich and powerful narrative of our community during a period of intense social and ideological upheaval.
Izzy Orloff also recorded an oral history, which can be accessed on-site at the State Library, and can be found on our online catalogue.
Read an in-depth story about his photography.
Search the catalogue for the Orloff collection and to see the other photographs and stories online.
For more stories from the State Library and the State Records Office, follow @statelibrarywa and @staterecordsofficewa on Facebook and @statelibrarywa on Instagram.
Recorded live on ABC Radio Perth on 19 February 2021.
Transcript
[Segment introduction. Male voice asking “What is history?”]
[Suspense instrumental music in the background]
[Different voices saying “Nothing will save the government... something revolving.... that’s one small step for... the world keeps revolving... just a little bit of history repeating, repeating, repeating....]
Christine: You know what it’s like when you return to a place you haven’t been to for a long time, and so much has changed. While you were away, buildings have come and gone. Photos can be an invaluable way to retrace city and streetscapes. And remember, what was, for Perth, one of the key photographers to do that was, Izzy Orloff. Dr Kate Gregory, Battye Historian at The State Library of WA, is in to tell us more. Hello Kate!
Dr Kate: Hi Christine, how are you?
Christine: I’m very well. Now, who was Abraham Izzy Orloff? Was Izzy the nickname?
Dr Kate: Izzy was his nickname, that’s right. Look, Izzy Orloff is really an incredible figure when we look back on his life. He was born in 1891 in Russia, in the Ukraine and his family migrated to Palestine in 1903 as Jewish people in Eastern Europe. Many kind of fled Eastern Europe at that time, suffering great discrimination and so they went to Palestine, part of the Zionist movement with the aim of setting up a Jewish state prior to Israel actually being established.
So, Izzy was a child when he went to Palestine and then spent about a decade or so in Palestine before actually migrating to Perth in 1910 following his brother who had immigrated to Western Australia and you might think, God it’s extraordinary how... why from Palestine to WA? How does that work…
Christine: Yes, of all places... yes...
Dr Kate: But in fact, this was a trend. There were Jewish... There was Jewish migration in the early 1900s and such that there were about 1500 Jewish people living in Perth when Izzy Orloff arrived in 1910 and I guess really for many of these migrants particularly from Palestine, saw WA as a place of opportunity, and in fact many may have intended to return to Palestine but stayed on in Western Australia and flourished as Izzy Orloff did.
Look, Izzy Orloff became a photographer. He trained in Paris in the early 1920s and over the decades he amassed this extraordinary photographic business and practice. He was a professional photographer, and he took photos for the Sunday Times, sold photographs to The Sunday Times.
Christine: [surprised] ohh
Dr Kate: And yes, did a number of commissioned portraits as well. But we’re left with this extraordinary collection of photographs.
Christine: Ok. So, let’s talk about these. What do they capture?
Dr Kate: Yes, so the focus that we have really is from about 1920 to about 1935. So, it’s the interwar period of Perth. After World War I and before World War 2 and I guess in the 1920s particularly it’s a period of great exuberance. There’s a lot going on; a lot of social upheaval, a lot of change, a lot of optimism and a lot of exuberance because I guess, you know post World War I and the depths of despair suddenly...
Christine: Yes, you’ve got swing music, swing dancing was born.
Dr Kate: In fact, you mention the dancers because Izzy Orloff by all accounts you know he was an incredible dancer.
Christine: [Astonished] Was he?
Dr Kate: Yes!
Christine: [Laughs]Really?
Dr Kate: And he did a lot of... in fact a lot of his early photographs really started out from the dance hall he... he had a studio on High St in Fremantle, and he’d go to dancers at the Town Hall and then take some photographs and whip back to his studio, quickly develop them and print them, would come back to the dance and then sell them.
Christine: [Laughs] Oh, that’s very clever.
Dr Kate: Yes, he was and so...
Christine: That’s the biggest... dancing photos are such a wonderful thing because you’re having so much fun in the moment you don’t think about a photo. Someone takes it and you can see that joy, so that’s probably what you saw in the people at the time. Do you know what style of dance?
Dr Kate: I don’t. I can’t tell you that. I know that he went to a lot of dances. So, he did a lot of dance, he did roller-skating, he did sailing, he did fishing. He was very gregarious and also civic minded character. So, he was enormously active, very, very outgoing.
Christine: Well, he would have been well known by all of the groups at the time because they’d see him enter a room and go ‘well you know, better straighten up your tie’.
Dr Kate: Yes, most definitely, and I guess his photography is kind of divided into two major focuses I suppose. On the one hand, photographs of people and groups of people and there are lots of kind of sporting clubs and events and military parades and surf life-saving parades and all sorts of activities that he took photos of and then there are these extraordinary photographs of streetscapes, Perth streetscapes; often panoramas and taken from a great height. So, Izzy would actually climb, scale buildings, climb buildings in order to get the best vantage point... viewpoint...
Christine: [Astonishment] Wow!
Dr Kate: …to take his photographs. So, there’s a whole set of photographs really in the hundreds that are really elevated points of view and just this very kind of sweeping vistas of Perth streetscapes.
Christine: Which streets? Can you give me an example?
Dr Kate: Through Fremantle, throughout Perth, even Mount Eliza and over the Swan River, so he really... he was there... I guess he was a photo-journalist. He was definitely an early photo-journalist and wherever there was an event, wherever there was an action, any action, Izzy would be there and we have got a wonderful oral history with Izzy Orloff and in that oral history, there’s a quote that I’d love to read because it’s just so... it just explains kind of who Izzy was.
Christine: Yes please.
Dr Kate: He says, “I was never without a camera on my shoulder because you never know what you’d come across in the street. You never know what you might see and something can happen all of a sudden”.
So, you can just see... imagine him. He was always in the thick of things and everybody knew him and loved him.
Christine: He was onto it before we were. He knew, he knew that you needed a camera in your hand and now we all have one. That’s so freaky.
Dr Kate: Oh, that’s right.
Christine: Yes, it is quarter past two on ABC Radio Perth and WA. My guest is Dr Kate Gregory. She is a Battye Historian from the State Library. We’re talking about Abraham Izzy Orloff. He was born in the Ukraine, moved here after learning some photography skills, took some of the best photos we have of early Perth. How rare are some of these shots?
Dr Kate: Yes, well they are rare and in fact we have... there’s about... probably altogether around about 3000 photographs that we have in the State Library, but we know that this is actually, likely, a fairly small proportion of the overall photographs that he took. So, the photographs that we do have that still survive, would mainly relate to that interwar period but he continued his business until 1960 when he finally sold his Fremantle studio. So, in fact these are rare and they’re incredibly valuable as an historical source because as I said, they show change in buildings and places and really historic events as well as kind of everyday streetscapes and everyday people. So, they are really significant.
Christine: Would it have been expensive to be a photographer back then? What would it have cost to develop all these photos?
Dr Kate: Yes, that’s an interesting question because in the twenties, photography was booming, and so even just in High Street Fremantle, there were probably 10 to 15 photographic studio businesses, so he was right in the thick of it. Yeah, it was a really successful business to get yourself into and so I think he made a very good business from it but as I said, he sold to The Sunday Times. He also did things like passport and identification photographs.
Christine: Oh yes.
Dr Kate: He worked a little bit for the Customs Department in Fremantle. So he’d... the Customs Department would contact him for instance when there was a boat coming from South East Asia and they had to photograph the people on the boat before they were taken in to the, I don’t know, Immigration Department or into Customs, so Izzy would go down and take photographs but he did a whole range of things. Even in World War I he tried to sign up, to join the army but he was rejected on health grounds or physical grounds for some reason and instead he was employed in the intelligence branch as a translator and interpreter. So, he had all of these other kind of strings to his bow and I mean I mentioned that he was civic minded. He was very active in the WA Jewish community and in particularly an organisation called the WA Jewish Welfare Society that formed in 1933 to help Jewish refugees from Europe. So, Izzy was the representative for Fremantle and he really did help many Jews and other displaced people from Europe during this time.
Christine: I wonder if anybody out there of Izzy Orloff and has a story related to his work or his character 1300 222 720 or 0437 922 720.
What is it like for you when you look through his photographs and compare them to Perth now?
Dr Kate: Look it’s a real privilege and a real... I guess, for me what comes across is this enormous vitality in Perth and in Perth people and the activities that were going on. For instance, there’s a set of photographs that he took relating to South Beach in Fremantle in the 1920s and it is such a vibrant place. It is just... it is incredible. They had... a train, a passenger train, came down there and you know, so people could get out and just the exuberance of the crowds. The amount of people on the beaches, the activities; there was a merry-go-round, the music. It was a place of great festivity and Izzy Orloff really captured that kind of dynamism. So, the images are vibrant and you get that sense of kind of vibrancy, so I think in terms of the past, it doesn’t... it’s not kind of still and stayed. It’s living and vibrant. That’s what you get from Izzy’s photos.
Christine: And that goes to show that they are good photos as well. So how did the State Library (of WA) end up with Izzy’s collection of works?
Dr Kate: Well, they came to us after he had passed away in 1983 so it was after his death that we got these photographs and as I said they relate mainly to the interwar period and we understand that in fact a whole number of photographs and whole significant collection of his work was actually lost when his photographic studio was sold in 1960.
Christine: [Disappointment] Oh, what a shame.
Dr Kate: They may have been inadvertently destroyed. It’s such a shame but you do kind of hope that you might come across this secret collection of Izzy Orloff photographs stored somewhere.
Christine: [Gasp]
Dr Kate: You know these things do occasionally come to light...
Christine: Oh, they do and the phones have lit up, which is a good sign. I wonder if somebody has got some. Can you imagine?
Let’s go to Ron, who is in Floreat. Good afternoon, Ron.
Ron: Good afternoon.
Christine: You heard the name Izzy Orloff. You gave me a call. Tell me why?
Ron: Well, because my mother used to take us as young kids in the early fifties down to his High Street studio for family portraits. He was a big family portrait photographer and I’ve got a photo of my sister and I aged about 4 and 5 which he took and also when I was playing football in the underage teams for Mosman Park. All the teams would go down to his studio at the end of the season in their football guernseys and would be lined up in his studio and formal portrait would have been taken of each team like I’ve got one of the under 14s team and the under 16 teams and there was an under 18s team and the cricket club, the football clubs, yeah any sporting club in the area would go to visit Orloff studio.
Dr Kate: How precious. Are they good photos Ron?
Ron: Yeah, yeah, excellent quality. Interestingly enough, I think they were originally taken in black and white or sort of sepia tones and you could get them colourised. This is in the age before you know colour photography. So, someone would colourise them. I’m not sure whether he would colourise them himself but someone…there was the art colourising photos.
Christine: Mmm… I’ll put that question to Dr Kate Gregory. She’s nodding Ron. Kate, did he do that himself?
Dr Kate: He had... that’s fascinating Ron. Thank you for calling in. That’s really lovely to hear. I know there were three or four women that worked for him in his High Street studio and one of those women was called Martha Bateman and we have a wonderful recollection of hers, of Izzy Orloff and we actually know from that, that she used to do some of the hand colouring of some of his photos [laughs].
Christine: Ahhh interesting.
Dr Kate: And she describes that apparently working for Izzy Orloff was wonderful. He was very much go, go, go but he treated his staff incredibly well. He was very fair and honest in his dealings. The studio was apparently spotlessly clean. Martha just has these wonderful... she was known as ‘Matty’ actually... wonderful memories of Izzy Orloff and working for him over a number of decades.
Christine: How’s about that Ron?
Ron: Yes.
Christine: Was it a neat and tidy studio? Do you remember him as a man or were you quite young?
Ron: Well, I don’t remember too much about it and I certainly don’t remember when I was four or five...
Christine: Yes, fair enough.
Ron: ... but you know I think most families... I’m sure people in the Fremantle area if you went through their photo collections, they’d be lots of very formal photos and they were sort of mounted very carefully on sort of cardboard paper. They weren’t just look prints. They were sort of always mounted or at least the football club ones were. I don’t know whether he did that himself, you know because you’d have... if you’ve got a team of 18 footballers...
Christine: You’ve got to do many photos, yes.
Ron: Every name would be underneath on the piece, on the big piece of cardboard, like they were about 8 x 10 size cardboard and so whether he did that...
Christine: We’re not sure...
Ron: But yes, but he certainly called it, the marketing of the sports teams down there.
Christine: Yes, very, very cleaver when you think about it Ron. Thank you for the call.
Ron: [Laughs] Ok. Thank you.
Christine: Ron from Floreat.
1300 222 720. We’ve also got Germaine on the line. Hello Germaine.
Germaine: Hello.
Christine: What is your memory of Izzy?
Germaine: Well, not my memory. It was my mother and father’s. They were married in about [19]48 or [19]49 and Mum always said, Izzy Orloff, he wouldn’t let her comb her hair. She had... she obviously had a perm but she wasn’t allowed to comb the perm out.
Christine: [Disbelief] Why’s that?
Germaine: And also... I, I don’t know. It was all neat and tidy and she wanted to do something, you’d need to... no, don’t touch it, it’s fine. And then and you know just... it just was one comment and Izzy wouldn’t let me comb my hair and the other one was that my mum whenever she smiled, her eyes crinkled right up and he kept saying, “Open your eyes, open your eyes”...
Christine: [Laughs]
Germaine: But ... and the other thing... at one stage, I’ve got a very vague remember... vague memory... that somebody said that they found a whole lot of photographs in Kalgoorlie because my grandparents were in Kalgoorlie and they were handing them out to the people who they belonged to. So that couldn’t have been... I’m sure Izzy was in Kalgoorlie at some stage as well.
Christine: Interesting. We’ll leave that with Dr Kate Gregory and see if we can find out about that. Thanks for the call, Germaine.
Germaine: No worries. Thank you, bye.
Christine: Yes, nice to talk to you. 1300 222 720. Kalgoorlie, hey Kate?
Dr Kate: I don’t think so. Not that I know of. I think that he was pretty much based in Fremantle for the majority of the time.
Christine: We’ve got a state-wide audience so if anybody from Kalgoorlie is listening and knows anything of that, you can give me a call. 1300 222 720. Izzy Orloff is the photographer. We are talking about. Well those were lovely memories to have. This text says, “Although controversial, I’m curious to know whether some of his photographs capture the experience of Aboriginal people around that time in the 1920s”.
Christine: Do you know Kate?
Dr Kate: They are a few photographs that he took for instance, the transcontinental railway; I think it opened in about 1919 or 1917 and we have some photographs that show Aboriginal people from the various railway sidings and platforms that Izzy took because the Aboriginal people would come and sell various kind of artefacts to tourists, to people that were travelling through. So, there is the odd photograph but he didn’t take you know whole series of Aboriginal people unlike other photographers who did.
Christine: Ok. Interesting. Well, look Dr Kate Gregory, it’s always great to catch up. Thank you so much for coming in. We’ll speak to you again in a fortnight’s time.
Dr Kate: Thank you Christine, that was a pleasure.
Christine: Battye Librarian from The State Library. So, Izzy Orloff is the photographer we are talking about the collection that the State Library has is the interwar period between 1920 and 1925.
(End of interview)
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