Design no 20

This black and white photograph of a street drain in Berhampore, Wellington, was taken in 1954 by Steve Rumsey. According to Rumsey's notes published in The Developer Enlarger magazine in June 1955, 'This picture was taken with a 2 1/4 x 1 5/8 Super Ikonta "A", on H.P. 3 film, developed in Promicrol. Exposure 1/250 sec. f 16, at 9 a.m., in March. The entire negative was used for the print. I had been waiting for a tram, and as it came into sight I stepped across the pavement. At that moment the sunlight caught my eye and I "saw" the picture. The viewpoint was changed slightly to improve composition and light textures, the camera was snapped, and I stepped on to the tram. Apart from the design (which appeals to me particularly) and the textures, this photograph has deeper significance in that it is a comment on our way of living, an aspect of civilisation. And, finally, it is a Wellington drain!'

Pictorialism going down the drain
While Design no. 20 isn't the most radically modernist photograph that Rumsey produced in the 1950s, it had a significant impact on the camera club movement in New Zealand. The realism of Rumsey's photograph was interpreted as a challenge to the prevailing pictorialism - an approach in which photographers would draw on the stylistic effects of 19th-century art. Design no. 20 challenged this with its uncompromising realism. Here, for example, is a review of a talk given at the Wellington Camera Club, published in The Developer Enlarger in September 1955: 'June opened up on a very strong note with Dr. Salmon giving his talk on "Point of View". His main point of view was to strive for realism in photography, which he reminded us is the most recent of arts. This style of photography seems to have been left on the shelf by our club members, and our work has become too stereotyped. … Dr. Salmon referred to the famous "Drain" picture in the course of his talk, and in closing he emphasised that the realistic approach is a technical "must". It is the modern trend.'

Seeing 'The Light'
As Damian Skinner writes in Ideas and Images: Steve Rumsey and the Camera Club Movement 1948-1964, 'In 1955, Design No. 20 was reproduced in the Wellington Camera Club's magazine The Developer Enlarger, along with Rumsey's essay "The Light". This photograph and essay summarise Rumsey's battle with pictorialism through conceptual photographs that attempted to express big ideas; and a demand that photography embraces its own specific technological (and therefore aesthetic) reality.' Rumsey argued that photography had lost its way when it ignored its nature as a product of an 'age of science and mass-production' and relied on fine art effects. The realism of Design no. 20 was one way of cutting ties with the past and embracing the potential of photography as an art of the modern age.

The title of the photograph marks Rumsey's other strategy. Rumsey had a list of25 themes that he photographed between 1948 and 1964, and Design no. 20 represents one of these – City. It is, as Rumsey wrote in 1955, 'a comment on our way of living, an aspect of civilisation'.