Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

Siauliai, Lithuania

Biography

Olegas Truchanas, wilderness photographer and conservationist, was born on 22 September 1923 at Siauliai, Lithuania, the son of Eduard and Tatjana Truchan. Affected by the social upheavals of World War II he fled to Germany in 1944 where he studied law briefly at the University of Munich. Migrating to Australia as a displaced person, Olegas landed in Melbourne in 1949. He chose to settle in Tasmania and worked a two-year contract as a labourer at the Electrolytic Zinc Company at Risdon. In 1951 he left Risdon to take up a job as a meter reader with the Hydro Electric Commission, eventually progressing to the position of engineering clerk. Like many other post war emigrants, Olegas arrived in Tasmania with a sense of loss and dislocation. However through early exploits with his camera into the largely unexplored south-west Tasmania he quickly developed a new sense of place, which grew to become a lifelong passion for the protection of this unique wilderness environment. In 1956 Olegas married Melva Stocks. Later with their three small children, they spent some of their leisure time bushwalking and skiing. They built a home in Hobart on the eastern flank of Mt Wellington. It was destroyed in the 1967 Hobart bush fires, together with all of Olegas’s photographic works. From 1950 until 1954 Olegas exhibited black and white portrait and landscape photographs with the Southern Tasmanian Photographic Society. Using photographic skills gained in Germany he dominated these competitions, winning many awards. He was also a member of the Tasmanian Miniature Camera Circle, a club established in Hobart for devotees of 35 mm photography. Beyond Tasmania, Olegas was one of eight Australian photographers to receive an award at the 'Jubilee International Salon’ exhibition in Canberra in 1951. Between 1951 and 1953 he won many competitions organised by The Australasian Photo-Review, who published eight of his black and white photographs, including Oily Waters on the cover of the February 1954 edition. A prestigious boxed portfolio of photographs by Dr Julian Smith Fifty Masterpieces of Photography was one of Olegas’s treasured prizes. A move was necessary from his black and white photographic work, to record in colour his explorations along Tasmanian wild rivers, then later Lake Pedder, the flooding of which in 1972 attracted attention throughout Australia and internationally. From the early 1950s until 1971 Olegas presented numerous public slide shows of south-west Tasmania. With the threat of hydro-electric development in this area, these presentations became a persuasive medium in showing what could be lost forever. The shows drew increasing audiences intrigued with the mystery and wonder of this little known corner of Tasmania. Topics included a recently discovered natural alpine garden at Mt Anne, the Arthur and Frankland Ranges, Bathurst Harbour and the Old River by canoe, the Denison and Gordon Rivers, the distinctive crescent shaped beach of Lake Pedder as well as Tasmania’s unique wild flowers and spectacular geological features. In the late 1960s the Dutch born emigrant photographer Frank Bolt proposed annual camping trips to Lake Pedder for artists, photographers, writers and musicians. Olegas Truchanas was a member of the group that evolved loosely around Tasmanian watercolour artists led by Max Angus and included Harry Buckie, Elspeth Vaughan and Patricia Giles. Arising from the 1970 artists camp were the key double exhibitions of their work 'Lake Pedder 1971’ held in November that year at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart and at Saddler’s Court Gallery, Richmond, Tasmania. The waters were rising into the Lake Pedder impoundment and further hydro-electric development was proposed for the Lower Gordon River. At the exhibition opening at Saddler’s Court Gallery Olegas made his much feted speech about the threats to the natural environment. …This vanishing world is beautiful beyond our dreams. It contains in itself rewards and gratification never found in the artificial landscape, or man made objects so often regarded as exciting evidence of a new world in the making. This is where my friends who paint, who have painted Pedder, I am sure will agree with me entirely. The natural world contains an unbelievable diversity, and offers variety of choices, provided of course that we retain some of this world, and that we live in the manner that permits us to go out, seek it, find it, and make those choices… In December 1971 after spending the holiday break with family and a small group of friends at Lake Pedder, Olegas prepared for a solo canoe trip down the Gordon River. He intended rephotographing his river images collection destroyed by bushfire five years earlier. On 6 January 1972 Olegas Truchanas accidentally drowned in the Gordon River aged 48 years. Following his death books such as The World of Olegas Truchanas and Scott Millwood’s 2003 film Wildness confirmed and further enhanced Truchanas’s reputation outside Tasmania as a passionate advocate for environmental protection. His images began to feature in art museum exhibitions. Perhaps the most important was the exhibition 'In the Balance: Art for a Changing World’ where his work was exhibited amongst other Australian and international artists concerned with current environmental issues. His work for this exhibition, Lake Pedder – the Audio Visual, revealed the dramatic effects of light, rain and shadow on the ever changing mood of this mysterious and stunningly beautiful landscape. Olegas was an important and influential photographer whose vision, creative skills and untiring devotion to the protection of Tasmania’s wilderness was to inform and inspire future generations. Fellow conservationist and friend Peter Dombrovskis acknowledged Olegas Truchanas as a leading influence in his own photographic practice. The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston hold the Truchanas Family Collection, which includes Olegas’s extensive 35 mm colour slide archive of south-west Tasmania, taken between 1967 and 1971. The National Library of Australia, Canberra holds digital copies of the Lake Pedder audio visual collection. Writers: arvh Date written: 2014 Last updated: 2014

Born

b. 22 September 1923

Summary

Olegas Truchanas was renowned for his slide presentations which brought ever-increasing attention to Tasmania's unique south-west landscape. Using a collection of colour slides accumulated from his trips in the area, he unveiled the beauty and distinctive value of this wilderness in a subtle and powerful manner. He believed that if people could see this exceptional landscape, they would be moved to protect it.

Gender

Male

Died

6-Jan-72

Age at death

49