Based on text from the original book: Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-1988
Gael Newton, 1988 Australian National Gallery Chapter 4 Footnotes return to Chapter 4 | contents -
'On Sun Pictures by the Calotype Process. By Douglas T. Kilburn. Esq. Read 4th December, 1853', Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Van Diemen's Land, vol. 2, part 3 (January 1853), pp.446-59. -
Sydney Morning Herald, 14 September 1855. -
Sydney Morning Herald, 26 September 1855. -
Sydney Morning Herald, 10 May 1855. -
See ch.2, n.5. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald of 7 February 1856 refers to the arrival of photography on the art scene. -
A few photographs dated c.1854 have been published, but the author has not been able to sight these to confirm dates (e.g. a view of Collins Street in Patsy Adam Smith, Victorian and Edwardian Old Melbourne (Melbourne: John Ferguson, 19781, pl.68). -
Stereographs of Melbourne (1855) by MacGlashan, who worked with pioneer Scottish photographer D.O. Hill (1802-1870) in the 1860s, are held by the Mitchell Library (small picture file) and an albumen print of Melbourne is held by the George Eastman House/International Museum of Photography, Rochester, New York. Haviland reported on Australia in a letter to the Photographic Society journal (21 July 1857), p.8. Frank Haes (1832-1916) visited Australia in 1857 and 1859, delivering a paper to the Philosophical Society of New South Wales, published in the Sydney Magazine of Science and Art, vol. 1. (1858): pp.99-101, which referred to his view of Bridge Street taken on 24 May 1858. James Freeman's paper on photography, printed in the second volume (1859), p. 139, refers to Haes' use of Dr Hill Norris' 'dry plates'. Haes also reported on the development of photography in Australia. See his article in Journal of the Photographic Society (22 March 1858): p.179. He noted there were about thirty amateurs in Sydney, fewer in Melbourne. -
A portrait of a Miss Abbott is held at 'Narryna', Van Diemen's Land Folk Museum, Hobart, and two portraits are reproduced in Eve Buscombe ' Artists in Early Australia and their Portraits (Sydney: Eureka Research, 1979), p. 371. -
The Abbott album at the Crowther Library, State Library of Tasmania, Hobart includes a small version, and 'Narryna', Van Diemen's Land Folk Museum, Hobart, holds a copy. -
A panorama attributed to George W. Perry is held in a private collection and by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, Melbourne. See Harold Paynting, Victoria Illustrated (Melbourne: James Flood Charity Trust, 1984), p. 178. -
Town Courier, 16 July 1856, The camera took plates 40.5 by 5.8 centimetres. -
Details of Frith's career are given in Chris Long, Tasmania, the First Photographs (ms. held by the author). -
Only two sections of the 6-part mammoth plate panorama (covering about 200 degrees) of 1858 from St David's survive as original prints - one in the Tasmanian Club, Hobart, the other in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Other versions are copies made later. -
Sydney Morning Herald, 26 March 1858. -
Sydney Morning Herald, 4 August 1858. -
Sydney Morning Herald, 1 May 1858. -
Held by the Museum of Victoria, Melbourne. Reviewed Sydney Morning Herald, 18 July 1859. -
This was built at the top of his house in Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst (see Rae's lecture to the School of Arts, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 September 1855). Rae was a poor draughtsman, and the few panoramas taken from his house, 'Hilton', reveal that even the use of the camera obscura could not improve his lack of skill (held by the Mitchell Library, Sydney, DG SVIA 14-16). -
Copies of both albums are held by the Australian National Gallery, Canberra, the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney, and the National Library of Australia, Canberra. -
Examples held by the Australian National Gallery, Canberra. -
Held by Josef Lebovic Gallery, Sydney. -
See M.E.A., p.28 for a description of Hetzer's activities. Frank Haes followed him with a stereograph series of Australian Botanical Studies, published in London in 1861 by his company McLean, Mehuish and Haes. See British Journal of Photography (15 July 1861): p.27. -
Sydney Morning Herald, 27 September 1858. -
Dalton also produced pastel portraits with an extremely 'photographic' look. These were possibly made by drawing over some form of over-enlarged photographs. Examples are held by Tim McCormick Rare Books and Prints, Sydney, of Mr and Mrs Hay, c.1858. Dalton's large mosaic of portraits of the 1st Legislative Assembly of 1859 is held by the New South Wales Parliament and also contains a photograph of Hay. -
Two copies are held by the John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, and a third by the La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne. See Dianne Reilly and Jennifer Carew, Sun Pictures of Victoria: The Fauchery-Daintree Collection 1858 (Melbourne: Currey ONeil Ross on behalf of the Library Council of Victoria, 1983), which includes biographies of both men. -
See Nancy Newhall, P.H. Emerson: The Fight for Photography as a Fine Art (New York: Aperture, 1975). -
See A.R. Chisholm's English translation, Letters From a Miner in Australia (Melbourne: Georgian House, 1965). -
For the advertisement and catalogue information, see Dianne Reilly and Jennifer Carew, Sun Pictures of Vicioria, op. cit., p. 16. -
Smith's criticism is discussed in Tim Bonyhady, Images in Opposition: Australian Landscape Painting 1801-1890 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985), p.14, and Bernard Smith, Documents on Art and Taste in Australia: 7he Colonial Period 1770-1941 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 167. -
See Tim Bonyhady, Images in Opposition op. cit., pp 87-106. -
By Jack Cato in his The Story of the Camera in Australia (Melbourne: Georgian House, 1955), pp. 14-16. Cato discovered the albums at Camden Park. They are now held by the Mitchell Library and are being recatalogued by Alan Davies. -
Four views of Ngauranga Gorge, 1850, are held by the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, in the J. C. Crawford album 111. Keast Burke published an article on Matthew Fortescue Moresby in the A.PR (October 1956), pp.588-97, as part of his programme of research into Australian photohistory. -
The John Rylands Library of Manchester holds an album, in poor condition, of Jevons' Australian photographs. His work is included in the Camden Park albums and a stereograph is reproduced in M. E.A., pp.32-3. Iris Burke wrote an early appreciation of Jevons as'Australia's First Pictorialist', in theA.P.-R, Uanuary 1955), pp.6-23. (However, Jevons' work was no better than Smith's or Hunt's.) Jevons' socioeconomic studies began in Australia with his 'Social Survey of Australian Cities' article, excerpts of which are published in Warren Wickman and Barry Groom, Sydney in the 1850s: The Lost Collections (Sydney: The Macleay Museum, University of Sydney, 1982), pp. 10-11. The activities of the Sydney photographers and a selection of their photographs are included in this account. Jevons did not pursue photography as a tool of social investigation as Henry Mayhew did for his London Labour and London Poor.. (London:1841). -
Reproduced Warren Wideman and Barry Groom Sydney in the 1850s.., op. cit., pp. 16-17. Initials on a print in Jevons' album at Rylands University indicate that the photographer was Robert Hunt. A collection of Hunt's photographs is held by the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney. -
Held by Macleay Museum, University of Sydney, Sydney. -
It is possible that Smith, a Scottish graduate in medicine from Edinburgh University, may have received instruction in photography from Dr Andrew Fyfe, who taught chemistry at King's College, Aberdeen. Several stereoscopic ambrotypes, attributed to Smith, of the University of Sydney in construction (c. 1855) are held in a private collection. Smith's stereoscopic work is described in M.E.A., p.34. His glass plates were rediscovered at Sydney University by David Macmillan, who wrote an account of Smith for the A.P. -R. of December 1956, pp.720-33. The most recent and most important study of Smith's photography is Catherine Snowden's paper, 'The Strayfaring Professor: John Smith, Photography and "Learned Leisure"', delivered to the Scientific Sydney workshop, Royal Society and Royal Australian Historical Society, History House, Sydney, 12 October 1985 (ms. held by the author). -
Held 8 December 1858 and 12 December 1859 and reported in the Sydney Magazine of Science and Art, vol.1 (1858): p.253, and vol.2 (1859): p.131. -
An advertisement for the Swan River Mechanics' Institute photographic soir6e of 15 September appears in the Perth Gazette, 10 September 1858. Pownall was described as the introducer of 'the whole of the apparatus and chemicals together with a selection of very beautiful specimens - stereos and microscopic'. -
Held by the family in Western Australia; another album is held by the Battye Library. Stone's work is reproduced in David Moore and Rodney Hall, Australia: Image of a Nation, 1850-1950 (Sydney: William Collins, 1983), p.31. -
How owned a copy of the English Art-journal from vol.12, 1850, containing articles on photography. See also Isobel Crombie, 'Louisa Elizabeth How, Pioneer Photographer', Australian Business Collector (1984), pp.82-6. -
See Barbara Hall and Jenni Mather, Australian Women Photographers 1840-1960 (Melbourne: Greenhouse, 1986). Julie Brown's 'Versions of Reality: The Production and Function of Photographs in Colonial Queensland 1880-1900', Ph.D. thesis, Queensland University, 1984 (Fryer Library), p.36, also contains useful data on the later increase in the number of women in the photo -
The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, State Library of Tasmania, Hobart holds the largest archive of Allport's work. -
Held by the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Hobart. Amateur work was at its peak in England from the late 1850s to the early 1860s, while the processes were exotic and restricted to gentlemen. For an account of the English scene, see Carolyn Bloore and Grace Seiberling, A Vision Exchanged: Amateurs and Photography in MidVictorian England (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1985). -
Albums held by the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Hobart. -
Album of early Australian Photographs, National Library of Australia, no. 366. Possibly Victorian or South Australian from the'Brighton' wool bale markings shown in photographs of the family property. -
Illustrated London News, 21 March 1857, p.266. It is equally possible that the photographs were by Robert Hall or travelling professionals such as the Duryeas who made extensive regional tours after 1855, offering both daguerreotype and collodion portraits. South Australian photohistorian Bob Noye knows of no amateurs there before Dr M.H.S. Blood (c.1808-1883) mayor of Kapunda, took photographs in the 1870s. For a discussion of South Australian photography of this period, see R.J. Noye, Early South Australian Photography (Saddleworth, South Australia: privately published, 1968) and'Clare and the Camera'in Clare a History (Adelaide: Investigator Press, 1974), pp. 20914. 1 am grateful to Bob Noye for information from his data base on South Australian photography to 1900. See also Alan Sierp, Colonial Life in South Australian Photography (Melbourne: John Ferguson, 1977). return to Chapter 4 | contents | |