SL Magazine Winter 2011 - State Library of New South Wales

f e a t u r e
W o r d s Valerie Lawson
a
b a L L E to m a n E ’ s
m o m E n t
in the spotlight
Nanette Kuehn is the mystery woman of Australian *of Anton Dolin, the charismatic star of the 1938/39
photography. The young German immigrant sailed Covent Garden Russian Ballet tour of Australia.
into Sydney two years before the outbreak of World Her best known photograph is of a heavily made-up
War II, fell in love with ballet and theatre, took her Dolin in David Lichine’s The Prodigal Son, a ballet
camera, a Rolleiflex, into darkened auditoriums over that had its world premiere at the Theatre Royal,
a period of only five years, then disappeared from
Sydney, in December 1938.
public life. She was so modest, so unassuming, that
The following month, Kuehn’s first photographic
even close family members knew nothing of her
exhibition opened in Sydney with a speech by the
passion for dance and drama.
Ballets Russes’ Polish dancer, Marian Ladre (his
Nanette’s brief life as a professional photographer anglicised name). ‘When we are dancing we often hear
began in Sydney at the Theatre Royal, where she
cameras clicking’, he said, ‘but we do not mind if the
photographed performances of the Ballets Russes results are always as good as these’. The photographs
companies that excited Australian audiences in the of the Covent Garden Russian Ballet were exhibited
late 1930s. By the end of the war, her career was over. at the Independent Theatre clubrooms.
Her legacy remains in one book, the large-format
‘All the photographs were taken by Miss Nanette
Balletomanes’ Art Book, in numerous performance Kuehn, a Continental photographer, who recently
photographs in the Mitchell Library and in three
arrived in Australia’, reported The Sydney Morning Herald.
photographic collections donated to the National
National Archives of Australia records show that
Library of Australia.
‘Nanette Anni Kuehn – Nationality: German –
Kuehn also took studio portraits, most notably
Arrived Sydney per Esquilino on 23 Feb 1937’.
aboVe: naneTTe kuehn, phoTo by max dupain,
C. 1940, on 249 box 19, no. 21
opposiTe: BalletoMane’s aRt BooK: PictoRial
PaRade of Russian Ballet 1940, f792.80994/2,
fronT CoVer feaTuring TaTiana riabouChinska
and paul peTroff in PaGanini
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