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This extract originally appeared in New Zealand Photography Collected: 175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2025).
This photograph of a tautly drawn sword held by an equally taut male nude is Herman Schmidt’s best-known image: he exhibited it on thirty-one occasions between 1935 and 1951. The salon system of exhibitions, in which awards are made for the best photographs in various categories, has long been a mainstay of photographic societies. Ambitious photographers may find that a single good photograph is recognised with a host of awards stuck to the back of the mount. Schmidt, however, did not enter the exact same print over and again. He reworked his image in many different print variations, from bromoils to gelatin silver prints, including variants like this in which lighter tones have been semi-bleached.