Frances Wallace and Cass Johnson

Frank Johnson was a highly esteemed photographer who spent many years photographing the Royal Melbourne Show for the publication Stock & Land, starting from the late 1940s. During Show week, it became an occupation that involved Frank’s whole family, including his children, Frances and Cass.

Frank would attend every day of the Royal Melbourne Show except Show Day, which was too busy. Frances and Cass remember attending the Show with their father and mother. Sometimes it would mean a day off school, or going on a Sunday when the Show was closed to the general public. Frances recalls that the Show at that time was:

… a busy place where people were working, and they were cleaning their cattle, and they were lining up their cattle, and they were waiting for their turn for Dad to take their photo, or they were waiting for their turn to go out into the arena for the judging.  It was people being very busy about something very important. And yet it was a bit of fun because there was an occasional ride on a merry-go-round or something, not the sideshow alley sort of stuff but just the ordinary hop on and ride a horse around.  We'd have competitions; who was the first person to find a pig with piglets, or something like that.

Cass remembers meeting all the competitors and learning about the different competitions and animals. ‘It wasn’t just livestock, you had that element of the family.’

Coming from an agricultural background himself, Frank quickly earned a reputation as a photographer who could be trusted, who was interested in his subjects and had integrity. Frank’s role was to cover the whole Show. He would look for interesting personalities to report on, as well as capturing the general atmosphere of the event. His photographs captured the size of the Show, with its huge displays of sheep or cattle. Cass recalls:

We would have photographs where you might have a line-up of 20 or 30 or 40 Merino rams, or some of the Corriedale ones – even double rows of 20 deep. He [Frank] would be balanced up on the top of a roof raft or somewhere, trying to get it.

Frank was meticulously organised, but the week of the Royal Melbourne Show would require the help of all his family. Both Frances and Cass recall the loungeroom floor of their childhood home being covered with prints to be sorted and organised each evening. Frank also refused to touch-up any of his photographs. ‘It was a very important principle that he worked on’, Cass remembers. He also knew animals well, which helped to create a strong relationship with the exhibitors: ‘No one had to point out the front and the rear end of cattle or sheep, or what constitution you’re looking for in livestock’.

Much of Frank Johnson’s impressive archive is now part of the Heritage Collection at the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria (RASV).