In 1944 she married Ross McInerney and in 1946 they moved to Koorawatha, a country property near Cowra where they had two children, a daughter, Sally, born in 1946, and a son Peter, born in 1948. Cotton's lifelong obsession with photography began with the gift of her first camera, a Kodak Box Brownie, when she was eleven. From the mid-1930s Cotton worked at the Max Dupain Studio in Sydney, where she experimented with close ups and lighting effects; during WW2 she ran this studio herself. His head obscured by shadows' and he adds, 'Dupain's muscular upper torso is accentuated by the harsh light that falls across it and by the creased clothing in the foreground. Cotton, Olive and Australian Girls Own Gallery. Sources used to compile this entry: Australian Women Photographers 1840-1950, George Paton Gallery, Parkville, Vic, 1981. This photograph arguably captures something of the mood of intimacy that existed between the photographer and her subject at the time the photograph was taken. ; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 'Transcript: Tribute to Olive Cotton', in. Ennis, Helen, 'Olive Cotton', in Kerr, Joan (ed. Anne Maxwell (with Morfia Grondas and Lucy Van), Created: 25 October 2016, Last modified: 26 October 2017, © Copyright in The Australian Women's Register is owned by the Australian Women's Archives Project and vested in each of the authors in respect of their contributions from 2000, http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE5984b.htm, The Australian Women's Register is published quarterly by the Australian Women's Archives Project In the years that followed interest in her work continued, with a wide range of her photographs - not just those from her modernist period - being included in a number of important exhibitions. She used controlled lighting and shadows to capture close up household objects such as flowers, insects, landscapes and people. [Olive Cotton : Australian Art and Artists file]. The genres she explored include fashion, still life, landscape, wedding photography and portraiture, including children's portraiture. She used Solio daylight paper to make her contact prints and she made her first enlarger 'from two open ended boxes [tins]: the smaller held the lens and slid up into the enlarger' (Australian Women Photographers 13). Gael Newton included some of Cotton's photographs in the exhibition she curated entitled Silver and Grey (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1980). McInerney, Sally, Cotton, Olive and Editions+ Artist Book Studio. They are the kind of images that gently impose themselves on you - and that stay with you' (Ennis 2002 PAGE). Olive Cotton (11 July 1911 – 27 September 2003) was a pioneering Australian modernist female photographer of the 1930s and 1940s working in Sydney. Hewson, Daryl, Kirker, Anne, Drew, Marian and Queensland Centre for Photography. In discussing the mural, which took her over one hundred hours to complete, Cotton noted that she was not aiming to create a Surrealist work - the emphasis being instead on using techniques that might enable her to capture the image she had in mind. Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, Victoria. In 1922, aged eleven, she received her first camera - a Kodak Box Brownie. They eventually divorced in 1944. Cotton captured her childhood friend Max Dupainfrom the sidelines at photoshoots, e.g. Blaxland, Helen and Haxton, Elaine (decorated by). In addition to Straight style, Cotton experimented with elements of Pictorialism. Papers of Rhyll McMaster, 1960-1987 [manuscript], 1960 - 1987. ), Miller, Steven, 'Australian Pictorialism', in. Includes the following photographs by Olive Cotton, Aircraft Mechanics, 1945, Silver Gelatin Print, 41.5 X 35.5; Drawing Officec1942-5, Silver Gelatin Print 15.0 x 20.5, p.89; Winter Willows, n.d. Ennis, Helen, 'Blue Hydrangeas: Four Émigré Photographers', in Butler, Roger (ed. Olive Cotton died in 2003 at the age of 92. Ennis, Helen, National Library of Australia and National Portrait Gallery (Australia). Helen Ennis has provided a detailed account of the processes that Cotton employed to create this work in her entry in Heritage: The National Women's Art Book. Ennis, Helen, 'Olive Cotton', in Kerr, Joan (ed.). Hackett, Sharon, 'A Representation of Women in the Arts: A Modern and Postmodern Portrait', PhD thesis, La Trobe University, 2004. Olive Cotton Cotton, Olive (1911-2003), Tea cup ballet , 1935, photograph, 37.3 x 29.6cm. Ennis, Helen, 'Partnerships: Helen Ennis on Olive Cotton'. In 1983 Cotton received a grant from the Visual Arts Board that enabled her to print the photographs that featured in her first solo exhibition Olive Cotton Photographs 1924-1984. In 1993 the Australia Council awarded her an Emeritus Fellowship for her work. Intimate and secretive, refusing to tell us everything, the photograph acts as a prompt for the viewer's imagination, that most potent of sexual organs' (Batchen 33).