THE HOSPITAL CORRIDOR, HARRY STEPHENSON LUCRAFT COLLECTION
c. 1930Black and white mounted photograph titled 'The Hospital Corridor', signed 'Harry S Lucraft' in pencil in the lower margin. There is minor discolouration to the image and small irregular patches of surface loss probably due to silverfish. The photograph depicts two women in 1920s style hats sitting on a wooden bench in a corridor at Perth Hospital. There is an open double door at the far end of the corridor where there is a patient visible sitting up in bed. The photograph is mounted on off-white board.
Dr Harry Stephenson Lucraft worked at the Perth Hospital (later Royal Perth Hospital) from 1928 until 1953. He died prematurely in RPH in 1953. He photographed in the pictorialist style. Like other pictorialists, he favoured misty scenes which lacked focus and gave his images a romantic, emotional quality.
Lucraft was a member (and at one time President) of the Van Raalte Club photographic group, a club formed in Perth in 1926 by August Knapp. Originally named the Dilettanti Club its object was to encourage the study and practice of pictorial photography. Lucraft and other members of the van Raalte Club exhibited at Kodak in Hay Street. In 1933 two of Lucraft's works were accepted by the Royal Photographic Society for an exhibition in London.
Lucraft's subjects included the Fremantle train station, Pelican Point, Kalamunda Hills and the University of WA grounds.
Details
Details
Harry Stephenson Lucraft
At this time this photograph was taken the limitations of Xray technology meant that photographs of body parts of varying densities were often over-exposed in places and lacked detail. The photography processes explored by the Van Raalte Club (of which Lucraft was a member) were in turn experimented with by radiologists, enabling body parts of varying density to be photographed without any detail being lost.
For many years Dr Lucraft did the clinical photography of the Hospital single handed. Eventually, he guided the development of a Department of Clinical Photography.
Western Australia
Australia
The Lucraft Collection is of historic, social, artistic and scientific significance. It is a rare, unique, extensive, experimental collection of thirty-nine original bromoil photographs from the 1930s and 1940s of local subjects including the Royal Perth Hospital.
They were taken by Perth Hospital cardiologist and amateur photographer Dr Harry Stephenson Lucraft (b.1894 - d.1953) in the 1930s whilst he was employed by Perth Hospital from 1928 until 1953.
