Based
on text from the original book: Shades of Light:
Photography and Australia 1839-1988
Gael Newton, 1988 Australian National Gallery
Chapter 3 Extending the Franchise
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The daguerreotype and collodion photography
in the 1850s-1860s
The discovery of gold in New South Wales and
Victoria in the early 1850s brought another influx of people
from the Northern
Hemisphere. Between 1850 and 1860 the population almost trebled
from under half a million, to well over a million, although Australian
society remained solidly Anglo-Saxon. Lacking friends and family,
people came together, often in short-lived odd partnerships,
to dig for gold or exploit the business opportunities of the
fields. It was a socially dynamic era in which a certain egalitarianism
and laconic humour in the Australian national identity may have
begun.
Professional
photographers also arrived with the tide of immigrants, and
quite a few unsuccessful diggers
turned to that
new growth
industry, photography, to make a living. Itinerant and professional
studio photographers were sustained by the new affluence, by
their clients' desire to send likenesses 'home', and by the overseas
interest in what was happening in Australia.
This
period in Australian photography saw the finest production
of the intimate, richly
cased daguerreotype, and also its eclipse
after 1858 in favour of the new wet collodion glass negative
and albumen paper print which proved an irresistible commercial
combination, especially since both processes were patent free.
The glass negative gave the detail of the daguerreotype and
the reproducibility of the negative-positive calotype process.
The
new albumen-coated paper also overcame the poor definition
of the earlier paper photographs
By
the mid-1850s many studios could provide collodiotypes, or
'glass pictures' as they were
variously called, although
some
like the Freeman Brothers in Sydney found clients preferred
the older daguerreotypes for portraiture(1).
The
potential of the new multiple print system called forth what
can only
be described as a campaign for paper photography.
It
was as if the future of photography was unquestionably
perceived by the professional and amateur alike, to lie in
the new
method. This in turn gave rise to two major forms: the
private portrait
album and the trade in views.
The
period was enriched by two variants around 1854; the introduction
of stereoscopic
photography, and the collodion
positive or
ambrotype, as it is known. The latter was rich in detail
and cased like
the older daguerreotype. It was made by converting the
wet plate negative into a unique positive image by the
addition
of a black
backing.
An
enthusiasm for paper photography and a new alliance of amateurs
and professionals also characterise the
I850s.
It
was the era
of lectures on photography, societies and exhibitions.
Overseas more specialist photography journals appeared,
and locally
there was a steady increase in the use of photographs
in the illustrated
publications.
A
new market for urban views and landscape photographs was opened
up with the growth of the illustrated
papers
and newsletters
of the 1850s, whose illustrations often carried the
by-line 'From
a photograph'(2).
A
number of American daguerreotype photographers
arrived in the I850s and setup some of the leading
studios
of the next
few decades.
One of the earliest immigrants was Samuel Evans
who arrived in Western Australia in 1853, the second
photographer there since
Robert Hall's pioneering visit of 1846. He set
up a Daguerrean
Gallery, first at Fremantle, then Perth. His brother-in-law,
the Englishman Alfred P. Curtis (1830-1902)
who arrived in 1852, took a position as a teacher
at Perth Boys' School.
By 1858 Curtis was working as a photographer out
of school hours.
Evans
later worked as a clerk, perhaps because the size of Perth
and environs were insufficient
to support
a
fulltime daguerreotype
studio. Curtis continued to work into the 1860s
when he made
views of the city on the collodion process. No
examples of Evans' or Curtis' daguerreotypes
have been identified.
A
good scattering
of daguerreotype portraits, and one view of a
Perth street, exist in collections in Western Australia(3).
Thomas
Glaister (w.1854-1870), who claimed
to have started photography in 1841, came from
the New York studio of Meade Brothers & Co,
and set up the American Australian Portrait
Gallery in Sydney in April 1855, after spending
a year
in Melbourne. Glaister brought
the technical sophistication, size and style
of American photography to his Australian work,
both in the daguerreotype and collodion
processes.
Shortly
after his arrival in Sydney, Glaister claimed to have introduced
stereoscopic
photography
to
the country. He made
a particularly fine stereo daguerreotype
portrait around 1858 of
Professor John Smith, himself an early wet-plate
process amateur photographer(4).
As
early as 1852, Douglas T. Kilburn's brother
William, in London, had sent him examples
and information on stereoscopic photography.
The former then demonstrated the process
in
Hobart in 1853. Stereo daguerreotypes were
made in Sydney
the following
year.
Stereoscopic
photography was first developed in 1849
and became popular after improved methods were
displayed
at the Great Exhibition
of 1851.
Stereographs on paper were well established
by 1858.
The
American brothers Perez (Mann) (1818-1873), Benjamin
(1826-1891) and Nathaniel (1827c.-1860)
Batchelder worked chiefly in Victoria
and New South Wales in the 1850s and
1860s. Perez had previously worked as
an itinerant photographer making daguerreotypes
on the Californian goldfields(6). He
and Benjamin Batchelder set up the Melbourne
studio of P.M. Batchelder in 1852 and
by 1860 Benjamin also opened a branch studio
in the
important goldfield's town of Sandhurst
(now Bendigo).
Alexander
Fox from England (w.1856-1870), had already
been at work in Bendigo, having opened
a daguerreotype studio there in 1856.
He switched to collodion and made a
series of
views of the town in 1857 which were
later sold as an album and used for
a number of lithographed illustrated newsletters
drawn
by Arthur J. Stopps (1833-1931)(7).
Townsend
Duryea (1823-1888) from New York,
arrived in 1852 as an experienced
professional photographer. He worked in partnership
with Alexander McDonald (w.1853-1897),
in Melbourne, and then in Hobart,
before forming Duryea Brothers with his brother
Sanford (w.1855-1859) in Adelaide
in 1855. From this base the Duryeas
toured the regional towns, and Sanford
worked in
Perth and surrounding districts from
1857-1859. The Duryea
studio, which Townsend operated alone
from 1863, was a leading one in Adelaide
until 1875. Only one daguerreotype
by Townsend
has been identified(8).
Perez
Batchelder recruited into his studio
other immigrants such as Walter
B. Woodbury
(1834-1885) who arrived from
Manchester, England in 1852, intending
to work on the goldfields. To make
a living he turned to the usual
round of odd jobs available to
the floating work force, and later
worked as a surveyor's assistant
using his training as a mechanical
draughtsman. By 30 January
1853, Woodbury had acquired a camera
obscura and could 'take a good
likeness'(9). These were probably
collodiotypes, as he is
recorded as having learnt this
process in England before departure(10).
By
1854 Woodbury had opened a studio in Melbourne and in the
same year
was awarded
a medal
for 'nine collodion
views
on
glass' (possibly ambrotype or
positive transparencies) at the exhibition
in Melbourne of works to be sent
to the Paris Universal Exhibition
of 1855.
Perez
Batchelder
employed him
part time in 1855
as 'the best glass artist' in
Melbourne(11).
Woodbury's
only surviving Australian work is an album dated 1853-1857
that is held by the Royal Photographic
Society in Bath, England. These are some of the earliest
wet plate images made in Australia.
His panoramic sequences of
two and eight views of Melbourne dated 1853 and 1854 respectively,
previously thought to be the earliest
photographic panoramas made
in
Australia, appear to have actually been taken in 1857(12). Woodbury's
album contains small prints, many from stereographs, and
includes some very lively portraits and views of the goldfields
and
surrounding towns. He left Australia
in 1857 and later achieved
fame for his technical wizardry that included in 1864 the development
of the Woodburytype, a photomechanical
reproduction process. The
only known view daguerreotype of the 1850s related to the
gold rushes
is a view
of the
post office at
the major
gold
mining town of Beechworth,
Victoria, taken in 1857 by
local studio
of Ackeley & Rochlitz(13). It
was one used for a series
of lithographs of the town,
which like Stopps' lithographs
of Bendigo were probably
used as illustrated letter
paper(14).
Bela
Rochlitz was Hungarian,
and had tried his luck on
the gold
fields before
turning
to photography
around 1855. Rochlitz
later
recorded his experiences
as an itinerant collodion
photographer
in New South Wales in the
early 1860s.
He described how he tracked
potential
business by heading
for the nearest
thread
of smoke
on the horizon hoping it
meant people not bushfires(15). Rochlitz'
account
also shows
how itinerants
eking out a precarious
trade could survive by
relying on the tradition of
bush hospitality.
Most properties were far
apart, and still are off
the beaten
track of
twentieth-century photo-historians.
It is likely
that our picture of rural
daguerreotype work in
Australia will improve
as more works are unearthed
in pastoral homes. Ambrotype
views
of properties
such as Rochlitz
took in the
early
1860s are
quite numerous.
None
of the daguerreotype photographers who worked
in Australia after
Goodman are known
to have
bothered with
licences
from Beard. Englishman
James Freeman (1814-1890)
arrived in Sydney in
1854 to join his brother William
(1809-1895)
who had arrived the year
before. He had previously
purchased the daguerreotype
licence for Somersetshire
from Beard in 1848(16). However, by around
1855 Daguerre was dead
and Beard and Talbot
had ceased
to prosecute infringers
of their respective daguerreotype
and calotype patent
rights.
The
daguerreotype in the balance
George
Goodman made some ten thousand portraits and view daguerreotypes
in his four and a half years
in business. Some two hundred
photographers were at work in Australia from the 1840s to
the early 1860s, although few studios after 1855 were exclusively
daguerrean galleries. The number of daguerreotypes produced
in these years probably reached one hundred thousand, of
which
only a few hundred are known to have survived.
We
know from newspaper advertisements and exhibition catalogues
that view
daguerreotypes were consistently made from 1843,
when Goodman depicted 'the rising metropolis' of Hobart.
These records
of the growth of settlements and the modification of the
landscape were not as numerous as the portraits and unfortunately
their
inherent historical value has not ensured a better fate for
them than the private portraits.
The
expense of daguerreotype portraits limited them to members
of the landed gentry or professional
class. Few
clerks, artists
or shopkeepers seem to have had their portraits taken.
One publican, Edward McDonald, in Sydney, was photographed
by
J.W. Newland
in 1848, and Hobart auctioneer and parliamentarian, Thomas
Lowes, was most unusual in sending a portrait of himself
in his undershirt
to relatives in New South Wales around 1850(17).
Most
daguerreotypes were made at the client's request. No
examples of officially commissioned portraits or views
are
known. The
celebrated dancer Lola Montez (1818-1861) was photographed
during her sensational tour of Sydney, the goldfields
and Melbourne in 1855-1856, but only one daguerreotype
thought to be her image is known in Australia(18).
Australian
daguerreotypes also tend to be on the smaller ninth,
sixth, and quarter plate sizes and are typically
of single
subjects or couples shown head and shoulders or to
the knees. A member
of the Murray family of the Yarralumla property, New
South Wales, was portrayed full length in what appears
to be
his working garb
of knee-high leather gaiters and boots(19). Professor
John Smith of Sydney University went to the trouble
of assembling
his
chemical equipment in Thomas Glaister's Sydney studio
for his portrait
of c.1858. Such references to a sitter's work are
rare.
Family
group portraits were quite common and regardless of the plate
size, studios like Thomas Bock's often
charged as much
as ten shillings extra per head(20). It
was most unusual for
a group of men to have themselves photographed at
a gathering, as the unknown subjects of a half-plate
appear to have
been. Perhaps they were actors for their apparently
informal poses
and expressions would have to have been held for
some time. The
party scene is also taken outdoors, suggesting it
was specially set up for the photographer.
In
an age of high mortality, regardless of social level, photographs
of children had a special appeal
beyond
the natural desires
of parents to fix the image of their offspring
at
their most innocent,
charming and dependent. Children presented great
problems to portrait painters and photographers
alike, as both
required holding poses for long periods(21). Many
babies are shown
asleep in family
portraits.
Mortuary
portraits of children or adults were regularly advertised by
studios, but none
were located for
this account.
One
previously little known collection of daguerreotype and ambrotype
portraits c. 1855-1860
related to the Mortlock family of South Australia, illustrates
the way in which new discoveries
can change our image of early Australian photography.
The collection contains over a dozen daguerreotypes whose
quality and unusual
subjects are rarely seen in individual portraits,
let alone grouped in specific collections(22).
The
most striking of the portraits are of Jemima, the wife
of Jacky-Master Mortlock (it seems
some Aboriginal
servants
were
described thus in terms of their masters).
One shows her in a beige crinoline with baby, William
Mortlock
squirming
and
laughing
on her knee, suggesting she was perhaps a
nanny, and another on her own in an equally fine frock.
Studio
advertisements in the nineteenth century consistently implored
clients to avoid light-coloured
dress in
favour of dark materials which showed up
better. The combination
of Jemima's
dark face and expanse of light frock, the
laughing child, and the fact that in one
shot she was
photographed alone,
indicating
her importance to the family, are all situations
which by definition seemed outside the
range of Australian daguerreotype work.
The
existence of the Mortlock collection is a testament to one
or more photographers'
talents
and willingness
to push
beyond
the accepted limits of the profession.
Other portraits, including a triple portrait
of
Margaret Mortlock,
her sister Elizabeth
Haigh, and John Love c.1860 also feature
light frocks and fine toning. Another
of Mrs Margaret
Mortlock
and her daughter
Mary,
of c. 1855, confirms that a fine standard
of work could be maintained in one of
the main
cities
over
a number
of years.
Other
genres such as narrative tableaux, still-life studies, nudes,
and humour
are as rare as scientific
applications
in Australian daguerreotype work. Daguerreotype
records of events
are also
extremely unusual, the only known example
being a small daguerreotype held by
the National Gallery of Victoria
showing the laying
of the foundation stone for the new
clock tower
in
the square at
Geelong, Victoria in 1856. More unusual
still is an 1856 daguerreotype of Mr
and Mrs W.H.
Walker's newly
erected
pre-fabricated house
Rose Cottage, in Alexander Street,
Prahran, Victoria(23). The Walkers
are shown in their backyard, and
the
rooster moved
a little too
fast to become one of the first animals
recorded in an Australian photograph.
This is a rare
picture of
domestic
life.
Only
a handful of outdoor daguerreotypes are known, of which the
Newland view
of Murray Street, Hobart,
of 1848,
is both
the earliest and most impressive(24).
The
ambrotype 1854—1862
Often
seen as a poor relation to both the unique daguerreotype and
the reproducible paper print, the
ambrotype is not given its
due. Far more of these were made than daguerreotypes, or have
survived from the brief decade of popularity. The ambrotypes
were cheaper
being on glass plates, clearer as they had no reflections like
the daguerreotype, and could be more easily coloured.
Thomas
Glaister was the master of the ambrotype portrait in Australia.
He made
finely dye-coloured enamelled portraits (on plates up
to 43 by 56 centimetres) including topical ‘news' pictures
such as the portrait of the lone survivor of the wreck of the
Dunbar
in 1857 who was shown close-up(25). The
ambrotype was quite often used for recording pastoral and domestic
properties, and some
ambitious townscapes were also undertaken. In 1861 Charles
Dicker, storekeeper
and prominent citizen of Dunolly, Victoria, made or commissioned
at least twenty-four views of the township(26). This
burst of local civic pride parallels the trade in views on
paper, which grew
from the 1860s to become a massive industry turning out thousands
of
prints of town halls, botanical gardens, banks and institutions,
which were bound into elaborate albums.
Paper
photographs were made from collodion negatives from their introduction,
but
ambrotypes were, it seems, preferred until
the late 1850s especially as their detail was greater. As
the ambrotype
could be developed and cased on the spot it suited itinerant
photographers.
Some
urban views were commissioned for specific purposes. The Bank
of Australasia shifted headquarters to Melbourne
in 1858
and purchased
a large vacant block for 22,250 pounds on the corner of
Queen and Collins Streets. In 1861 three consecutive views of
the
site and
all the nearby competitors' banks were photographed as
a case for erecting a new and grand building(27).
As
the ambrotype was cheaper because of the glass support, it
opened portraiture to a broader range of clients than
the daguerreotype.
The portrait of rather a self-conscious family has an
air of what
must have been a thrilling new sense of middle-class
self-importance. The notion of having a likeness made was no
longer something
which one 'deserved’ only as a member of the elite.
The
formality of most daguerreotypes seems to relax in
the ambrotype era due to the shorter exposures. Glaister's
large
family groups
have slightly more expression than earlier portraits
and the greater ease and subtlety of colouring in ambrotypes
also added
life to
the images. The ambrotype was still a professional's
process,
although the means to make them were less complex than
for the daguerreotype.
Even if made by professionals a new informality appeared
in the ambrotype(28) as
in the view of Mr and Mrs George and Jane
Crouch's
wedding breakfast in Hobart of 1861. Children's portraits
greatly benefited from the more comfortable procedure
of being photographed
on short exposures.
The
dazzling success of the cheap and reproducible paper photographs
from around 1858
onwards consigned
both the
daguerreotype and
ambrotype processes to redundancy. Paper photographs
were more flexible in
size, easier to colour, suited to illustration, and
accessible to the amateur. After the introduction
of the small carte-de-visite
portrait in the 1860s, photography achieved the destiny
predicted for it as the medium of the people.
An
early showcase for photography was provided by the exhibitions
held
in Sydney, Hobart and Melbourne
in
1854 of works to
be sent to the Paris Universal Exhibition scheduled
for 1855. Australia
had sent agricultural products to the Great Exhibition
of 1851
but the invitation to exhibit at Paris provided
one of the earliest opportunities to show the Australian
colonies'
progress
in an
international context. The Australian commissioners
complained of local indifference
to the exhibition, and the final display seems
not to have been particularly impressive(29).
By
the time of the 1862 International Exhibition in London, however,
the colonists began to understand
how to present
themselves better.
A huge pyramid covered in gold leaf was on display
representing the amount of gold mined in Australia
in the preceding
decade.
The
potential for photography as a convenient means of providing
information about Australia
in exhibitions
was inaugurated
at the Paris preparatory exhibitions. Daguerreotype,
collodiotype and
calotype views were shown at the three venues.
None
of the photographs from any of the 1854 exhibitions have survived.
Artist F.C. Terry
(1825-1869) made a commemorative lithograph
of the Sydney exhibition at the Museum Building
based on a daguerreotype of the hall by James
Gow (w.1855-1869)(30). Interior
views such as the Gow picture were most difficult
and rarely attempted.
Although
it was a tentative start to the
role photography would have, the Paris
exhibitions were the most
significant early
demonstration of the illustrative potential
of the medium. It was the era of
public exhibitions and also of associations
for the promotion of the arts. The Great
Exhibition
of 1851
had been one
of the earliest
important displays and from that date photographs
were included in public exhibitions. In
Paris in 1851 the
Société Héliographique
had been formed, and the new Photographic
Society of Great Britain held their first
purely photographic exhibition in London
in 1854(31).
The
view photographs in the Paris exhibitions
were all by professionals whose income
was still based
on portraiture.
Photography was
profoundly altered in the late 1850s
by the development of
the commercial
sale of views on paper and the serious
practice of photography for its own sake
by the new
class of
collodion amateurs
who henceforth became a force in Australian
photography.
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