Slides from Ron and Valerie Taylor's photographic collection relating to a fishing competition

Photographer Valerie Taylor (born 1935)

Photographer Ron Taylor (1934 - 2012)

Subject or historical figure Ron Taylor (1934 - 2012)

Date1953-2000

Object numberANMS1459

NameArchive series

MediumBlack and white transparency film, plastic

ClassificationsPhotographs

Credit LineAustralian National Maritime Museum Collection Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program by Valerie Taylor in memory of Ron Taylor

Terms

slides (photographs)

DescriptionThis photographic collection represents the career of filmmakers and ocean conservationists Valerie Taylor AM (born 1935) and her late husband Ron Taylor AM (1934-2012). The couple pioneered skin-diving, scuba diving and underwater photography and cinematography in Australia. Valerie was national spear fishing champion for three years in the 1960s, Ron for four years, however the couple soon stopped fishing and shifted focus to shark research, photography and film. They made chain mail diving suits to film sharks and became strong advocates for shark preservation. Early in her career Valerie Taylor worked with the New Zealand National Film Unit in Wellington as an illustrator. She was assigned to an animation studio, and completed drawings of animals and figures for educational films. This photographic archive profiles a selection of the many illustrations of fish, figures and underwater creatures drawn by Valerie over the years, many of which saw publication in children's books.SignificanceThis photographic collection is significant as the life's work of Australia's leading pioneering ocean conservationists, media personalities Ron and Valerie Taylor. It has strong aesthetic and scientific significance and joins a collection of the couple's technology and apparel already in the ANMM collection. These particular images document Valerie's artwork, much of it l;ate career when she illustrated children's books about sea creatures, mythical and real, and their adventures. Valerie started her working life in an animation studio.

The photographic collection dates from the 1950s until the 2000s, from when the couple met as divers and spearfishing champions, across all their years accumulating knowledge & expertise, underwater film & photographic experience and TV fame which saw them become two of the world’s top shark specialists - Ron, the can-do action man innovator and Valerie as his bold, beautiful photographer partner, both of whom swam amongst, baited and filmed sharks at breathtakingly close quarters.

The collection represents their career arc, shark hunters whose growing awareness of the fragility of species and marine ecosystems led to their strong, early and continuing advocacy as protectors, researchers and ocean environmentalists.

Together the couple opened the underwater world to early Australian television audiences after the medium was introduced to Australia at the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956. In the main Valerie was the photographer and Ron the cinematographer.

The subject scope is broad representing work from early diving and filming expeditions along the NSW and Queensland coasts for Movietone News and other television programs, to filming and research expeditions from inland ponds in Australia's interior to South Africa and across the Pacific. It includes benchmark imagery of many species and habitats including around their holiday home at Seal Rocks NSW, and Heron Island on the southern fringes of the Great Barrier Reef, and cultural excursions into the popular imagination in film shoots, including the blockbuster Jaws, released in 1975. It also includes imagery of coastal communities in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and in the Pacific.

Valerie Taylor has been much awarded for her underwater photography and in 1997 Valerie won American Nature Photographer of the year sponsored by the American press Club for a photograph of a whale shark swimming with her nephew in Ningaloo Marine Park.