PROFESSIONAL IDENTITIES
1st January 1894 Page 10 - Photographic Review of Reviews
MR. W. STUBBS
Almost everybody knows the original of this portrait, or did know him at some time. Without being an old man himself Mr. Stubbs is one of the very oldest of Australian photographers and he has in his time turned out an enormous quantity of that first-class work which has done so much to establish and maintain the reputation of many well-known firms. In 1853 after quenching his thirst for adventure on the gold-diggings the then juvenile Stubbs entered the employ of Duryea and McDonald in Bourke-street, East Melbourne and plunged wildly into the production of daguerreotypes which were in great demand and brought high prices. After this Mr. Stubbs established himself for a time in Launceston and having been successful in impoverishing the simple-minded people there by the aid of his artistic skill and commercial integrity, returned to Victoria and followed up the process in Ballarat and other inland towns, eventually connecting himself with the well known firm of Batchelder and O’Neill, in Collins-street, Melbourne. Mr. Stubbs was precisely the man they wanted and they knew that and kept him till they sold out to Dunn, Wilson, and Botterill, from whom Stubbs purchased the business in 1868 and carried it on with varying fortunes until 1889, when the land on which the gallery stood was required for "boom” purposes and the proprietor retired to enjoy a well-earned rest and moralize over the many human weaknesses which are never seen to better advantage than in a photographer’s studio. This is unquestionably but a meagre account of a man who has played his part both long and well in the dark (room) as well as in the daylight; but Mr. Stubbs is alive and hearty in Melbourne and will tell anybody as much more as they want to know and he knows a very great deal that is well worthy of being acquired.
MR. W. STUBBS
MELBOURNE
J. HUBERT NEWMAN
Whose gallery has been a landmark in Oxford-street, Sydney, for so many years, has moved into new premises at 314 George-street. If he moved into obscurity his work would discover him.
HENRY KING
Has also vacated his old gallery and taken the premises next door, known as 314 a George-street. In future he devotes himself to outdoor work, enlargements, and lantern slides the latter a speciality.
G. W. PERRY
Mr. Perry of Melbourne, sends a paper on "Halation", in which he claims the invention of the name for a big trouble.
KERRY & CO.
Are just now tempting the public with a fetching series of the best of the New South Wales Art Gallery pictures. They are most effectively colored, in addition to being excellent photographs.
1st February 1894 Page 10 - Photographic Review of Reviews
MR. J. HUBERT NEWMAN
Few photographers attach less importance to such publicity as J. Hubert Newman gets in this issue of the "Photographic Review of Reviews" than he does himself; but he is one of the "early fathers” and “old masters” of the art on this side of the equator, and he had to succumb to the inevitable. Mr. Newman took up photography as an amateur, in 1862, and made a success of it from the start. That success converted a hobby into a profession which he has followed with the greatest enthusiasm to the present day. With the exception of a short engagement to the well-remembered firm of Bradley and Allen, Mr. Newman has been all the time managing his own business, the premises he occupied for 25 years in Oxford-street, Sydney, having been a well known landmark for that quarter of a century to all the residents in, and visitors to, the maternal colony, and very few notorieties of any social calibre have missed an introduction to his artistically decorated studio. Some royal princes, an assortment of vice-royalties, and a whole ark full of leading and other kinds of statesmen, with clerical, municipal and miscellaneous dignitaries, have looked sweetly forth from the headrest at No. 12, and conferred favors on posterity that are not yet all recognized. In fact, everybody who wanted an artistic picture, as well as a good photo graph, got into the habit of going to that ad dress, and everybody who knows J. Hubert Newman will be likely to expect that all the southern world and his wife will continue the practice at the new atelier in George-street, which was opened to the public in the early part of this month, and is now in the full swing of a good business.
MR. J. HUBERT NEWMAN
CAPTAIN JOHN BOLTON CARPENTER
Whose portrait illuminates this number of the Review, is a genial mariner, whose troubles have been pretty prominently before the world of late, and will probably be very much more so if----. But of course it will all come right in the end. The British lion sleeps more heavily than he used to do, and does not even yet appear to be awake to the fact that his nose has been tweaked and his tail twisted by the Dutchmen who constitute the government of Netherlands-India. Captain Carpenter’s adventures in the Moluccas, as they have been related in numerous newspapers, read like chapters out of old fashioned story books. But they have all been painfully real. He went a-whaling in the good ship “Costa Rica Packet”, in the seas surrounding the Malay Archipelago, forgetful, as well as heedless of the fact, that he had some four years before picked up a derelict prow in those waters A miserable wreck was the prow, having very little of herself visible above the water, and no bottom to speak of. But this find, in the eyes of the Dutchmen (who were not otherwise busy when the skipper came along looking for whales again), constituted piracy, so they captured him, sent him to Macassar, a thousand miles away, for trial, then changed their minds and told him to “pigi,” which means to clear out of that. He accordingly “pigied”, and came back to Sydney to try and find out what Britannia who rules the waves was going to do about it. Up to the time of writing, Britannia doesn’t seem to have got a good grip of the situation, but the captain has, and he very properly demands compensation for his iniquitous treatment and his heavy losses. The report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council of New South Wales on this matter is highly interesting. As a skilled and an enthusiastic amateur photographer. Captain Carpenter gets a corner in the Review this month. Two corners, in fact, one for himself and one for one of his whaling pictures. He has taken a great many of these, and they are remarkably good, especially when it is remembered that they are chiefly snap-shots on whole plates, taken from boats, mast-heads, stunsail booms, and all sorts of inaccessible spots to which an adventurous sailor might climb and preserve his balance both of mind and body while devoting himself to the pursuit of Art under difficulties.
CAPTAIN J.B. CARPENTER
SPLITTING THE CASE
is one of Captain Carpenter’s whaling pictures, a series of which (mostly snapshots),
and all whole plates, were taken on Baker’s Specially Rapid plates.
Among the novelties of the month in dealers hands are two which promise much bliss for amateurs. One is a simple spring balance with glass pan, something after the style of the old letter-balance. It weighs grains up to 12 drachms. The other is a syphon for print or negative washing, that can easily be attached to any sort of vessel in which either work may be done.
P.C. POULSEN:
Resides in Queen-street, Brisbane, is turning out some excellent platinotype work, and, what is more to the purpose, is making it pay. Up to date I have only heard about this, but have been promised some specimens to show his Sydney friends.
WILEY & CO.: also of Brisbane, have been attracting attention with some good three-quarter and full-length studies in panel size, which the Queenslanders appreciate.
MENDELSSOHN & CO.:
Resides in Swanston-street, Melbourne, having tried a reduction to 15s per dozen for cabinets tor three months, have now decided to return to the old 20s per dozen tariff. Professional photographers everywhere please note.
The story runs that the trade-mark of Scott’s Emulsion is an exact reproduction of a Norwegian fisherman who had just caught the biggest cod on record and was hauling him off for sale to the proprietor of a local side-show. A band-camera crank snap-shotted the man and the fish just as the proprietor of the emulsion and the American consul were passing. The same idea hit them both at the same time. The negative was bought and copyrighted, the fisherman sold out to the emulsionist, the consul witnessed that it was a square deal all round and the poor photographer stood drinks for the crowd and was made a C.M.G., and married the fisherman’s daughter and went over to New York and gave the whole cod story away to the daily press and was killed in a Chicago pork factory while in search of another trade-mark for a patent glue. It’s a fishy story, anyway.
South Australia can boast, if she wants to, about the possession of a live photographic society in the South Australian Photographic Society. The bare statement does not necessarily cast any reflection on the other colonies.
1st March 1894 Page 12 - Photographic Review of Reviews
MR. T. DURYEA
Resides in Adelaide, is the gentleman whose portrait occupies the professional photographer's niche this month. He is the son of his father, Mr. Townsend Duryea, who started in business in Adelaide as long ago as 1854, when there was more money to be made there, and less professional piety than there is now. The original of the portrait is one of the oldest photographers in South Australia. He started in business for himself some twenty odd years ago at Moonta, and has been established in Adelaide for over ten years. His present studio in Rundle-street is one of the front rank resorts for people who want their photos, taken in that corner of the continent; for somehow it has come to be generally understood that “Duryea” believes in sending out nothing but good work and getting a good price for it This practice pays him, because there are still a lot of old-fashioned folk in the world who hang on to the old notion that exceptional cheapness is always more or less allied with a suspicion of nastiness.
T. DURYEA
ADELAIDE
1st April 1894 Page 9 - Photographic Review of Reviews
THOMAS MATHEWSON
Resides in Queensland, is the photographic figure-head for this month. He was born in Dumbartonshire in bonnie Scotland, but has been a dweller in the sugar colony since 1853, and is still a young man, with an ever increasing photographic reputation. Like many other professionals he began as an amateur, and then drifted into the stream; but, unlike many more of them, once there he ceased to drift and quickly paddled himself into the lead. He has now been thirty years in the business, and is as well known in all the large cities and towns of Queensland as Wragge’s weather forecasts, or the eternal kanaka question. He has had galleries and studios in Toowoomba, Dalby Maryborough, Gympie, Rockhampton, Bowen, Townsville, and Charters Towers, as well as in Brisbane, and has left the tracks of his tripod in all sorts of places beside, between the Great Barrier Reef and the “Never never” of the South Australian boundary. In 1876 Thomas Mathewson joined his brother Peter of that ilk, and founded the firm of Mathewson and Co., in Brisbane, where it may still be found without any trouble in the way of search, for the senior partner makes a speciality of children and other pets, and that alone, independently of the good quality of the work they turn out, has given the name of “Mathewson” a place on the muster roll of fame in the eastern colony.
THOMAS MATHEWSON
QUEENSLAND
1st May 1894 Page 10 - Photographic Review of Reviews
W.R. GEORGE
The portrait of W.R. George in this number is from the studio of Freeman and Co., Limited, of George-street, Sydney, of which establishment Mr, George is the managing director. He was born at Pebworth, near Stratford-on-Avon, his father being captain of the Gloucestershire Yeomanry. Mr. George arrived in Melbourne in 1852, and, like most early colonists, gained colonial experience in a variety of grooves, and with the usual vicissitudes of fortune. He has been a mounted cadet, clerk of petty sessions, brewer, carrier, dairy farmer, sawpit and timber yard owner, government contractor, bookseller, and finally a photographer, which profession he has followed for the last five-and-twenty years; Everybody who has been photographed in Sydney knows W.R. George, the firm with which he is connected being the oldest in New South Wales if not in Australasia, and Freeman and Co. claim to have always aimed at producing the highest and most permanent class of work, and to have been thereby enabled to keep up their priced without any provocation to join the army of “cut-throats” about whom so much has recently been written in the photographic literature of all countries. Mr. George is also a prominent figure in “the world on wheels”; he has been for some years the president of the Sydney Bicycle Club, and vice-president of the N.S.W. Cyclists Union. He has been "starter" at every great race meeting held since the sport took hold of the public, and has long been recognized by his brother wheelmen as the father of cycling in New South Wales. His vignette as a cyclist was taken by special request for the Review. He is 62 years old, and frequently looks not more than half of that age. This, we believe, is entirely due to his daily constitutional on the wheel.
W.R. GEORGE
FREEMAN & Co., LTD., SYDNEY
THE FATHER OF CYCLING IN N.S.W.
1st June 1894 Page 11 - Photographic Review of Reviews
G.F. JENKINSON
From the coast to the silver country is a big jump in search of a personality for illustration, but G. F. Jenkin son lives up there and is doing sufficiently well not to come away from it to seek for glory near the sea. Mr. Jenkinson is one of the successful professional photographers of New South Wales, who is not the less so in that he lives on the border of the “Never-Never” country and has few opportunities of blowing his own trumpet so that he can be heard afar off. He was born into a family of lawyers, the name being an old and well-known one in Gracechurch-street, London. He was also educated for the law. but liked it not, and chose the sea for a profession. Of this he tired and came out to Australia to learn sheep-farming, paying, as he says, “a heavy premium for the privilege of living in the men’s hut and doing a rouse about’s work”. As a sheep-farmer he may have blossomed, but never bloomed, for before that time came he migrated across the border to the Barrier ranges and filled with satisfaction the complicated position of over seer, dog-poisoner, mailman, and lamb-minder on a station then being formed. This was followed by cattle-droving, gold-mining, a spell at hawking, and then book-keeping for a wholesale grocer in Melbourne; but after a variety of experiences, he found his vocation in photography and practised it, first with a traveling gallery, and eventually at Broken Hill, where he settled down in 1888 and has since remained. Here he has been thoroughly successful, and does every description of work, claiming throughout to “raise the standard of photography, instead of degrading it by quoting cut throat prices and ottering gilt frames as an inducement to gain custom”. At the Adelaide Jubilee Exhibition, Mr. Jenkinson was awarded first order of merit for his views and portraits, but he is equally at home with platinotypes, opalines, stereos, enlargements, and flashlight work. Underground he took the Earl and Countess of Kintore, and Lord and Lady Jersey in the Proprietary Mine, and also fitted up his studio for flashlight portraiture. It is, unfortunately, unnecessary to remind anyone of the altered fortunes of Broken Hill, consequent upon the greatly reduced value of silver, but Mr. Jenkinson keeps pegging away still as he did when times were better and work of all kinds more remunerative. He is an enthusiast in his work and claims with many others that photography is a profession and not a trade. Finally, and with a modesty entirely his own, he says; “What little success I may have achieved as a photographer, I attribute to sparing neither plates nor pains to secure the best results, and to not making either myself or my work too cheap”.
G.F. JENKINSON
1st July 1894 Page 9 - Photographic Review of Reviews
H.W. BARNETT
The well-known features of H.W. Barnett, serve to remind many readers of the Review of their acquaintance with the genial professional who presides over the Falk Studios in Sydney (N.S.W.). Mr. Barnett is, as most of his friends know, on the other side of the equator just now, looking for novelties and so forth, with which to keep up the reputation of his firm; and for my information concerning him, I am dependent on outside information of a rather scanty kind. I am told that he was born in Melbourne in 1863, and with a natural bent in a photographic direction, which was confirmed by apprenticeship to Stewart & Co., of that city. He first started in business for himself in Hobart (Tasmania) and soon made a reputation for artistic work, which again brought with it a desire for a larger field. That took him to America, where he became engaged with Taber &Co., the well-known photographers of San Francisco, next with Gehrig, of Chicago, and subsequently with several of the leading artists in New York. From thence he naturally crossed to London, and was at once engaged by W. and D. Downey, the then fashionable photographers of Ebury-street, Belgravia, where all the members of the Royal Family and quite a circus of the leading dukes and duchesses were wont to go when the desire to be photographed once again became the leading feature of their existence. It was during this stage in his career that H.W. Barnett had the distinguished honor, or whatever else it might have been—of photographing H.R.H. the Prince of Wales and some other comparatively unimportant members of the Royal Family, as well as some of the dukes and duchesses aforesaid. He thus gained a lot of valuable experience in more ways than one, and this he has made good use of since his return to the colonies in 1885, when the firm of which he is now a member purchased an old-fashioned business in Sydney and opened the present Falk Studios. Of the work done there no commendation is required; it speaks for itself. The establishment is a very large and complete one and in high repute with all classes of the community. Theatrical celebrities are one of their many specialities, and the picture of Sara Bernhardt as “Pauline Blanchard”, is one of their successes. It must also be counted to the lady as one of her (commercial) successes, for the firm paid her the sum of £lOO for the privilege of photographing her, and Madame still sends large orders for copies of one or other of her pictures from whatever part of the world she happens to be collecting her revenue in. Mrs. Brown-Potter is likewise another of the small goldmines struck by this firm, as, in round numbers, they sold some 15,000 copies of her pictures during the comparatively short period in which that estimable lady enshrined herself in the great throbbing colonial heart. And now, apropos to the text, Mr. Barnett is expected back in Sydney shortly with a large and varied assortment of novel and attractive ideas photographic, which he has collected during his last tour through Europe and the States. And, be it remembered, this is the seventh time he has gone foraging around the world, with a similar object in view.
H.W. BARNETT
(FALK & CO).
1st August 1894 Page 9 - Photographic Review of Reviews
CHARLES L. BIRKIN
Charles L. Birkin, proprietor of the Yandyck Studios, Melbourne, is the original of the portrait on this page. He is a photographer with twenty-seven years experience, having made a start to accumulate that valuable property as an apprentice in South Wales in the wicked old days of wet plates, silver baths, and sloppy surroundings. After that he was for several years with the firm of Cobb & Co., of Woolwich, England (the head of which firm was photographic instructor to the cadets at the Royal Academy), and subsequently with one of the best known firms in the West of England Eleven years ago Mr Birkin came to this country for the benefit of his health, and has been connected with the Yandyck Studios, next door to the Melbourne General Post Office, ever since they were started, some years ago. For one year only he was the head operator therein, and since then the sole pro prietor. Mr. Birkin claims that he is the only photographer in Australia who has raised prices in recent years, having gone up 25 per cent, about four years ago, and he writes that at the present time he is getting more for cabinet pictures than any one else in Australia. I sincerely hope he is, and, if the record can be established, his merits deserve substantial recognition at the hands of the profession What one man has done, others should be able to do, that is to say, if they believe as Mr. Birkin does, that “cutting prices is a great mistake, as good work will always command a good price”. Which reminds me that Abraham Bogardus, the well-known American photographer, writing on the same subject, says: “When a photographer brags on his low prices, he is merely announcing the value of his work, so that the public may know how to estimate it”. All of which helps to form a chunk of sapience that is in no way depreciated in value by the companion fact that the said public dearly loves to get its wants supplied for as nearly next to nothing as may be, and when it can do that and get several square feet of “enlargements” thrown into the deal for absolutely nix, it is exuberantly happy, and not savagely critical. Nevertheless, there are many photographers of the same cast of thought as Mr. Birkin, and the work turned out of the Yandyck Studios is proof enough that he is no mere theorist.
CHARLES L. BIRKIN
MELBOURNE
1st August 1894 Page 9 - Photographic Review of Reviews
A. BARRIE
If Mr. A. Barrie is not as entirely Scotch in appearance as he is in fact, the cause is almost certainly to be found in his early shipment to Australia, from his boyhood’s home in Stirlingshire. And he had no sooner arrived than he became seized of the idea that it was his mission to be a photographer, and he is one of the comparatively few who had the luck to hit on the right groove at the first try. As a poet, parson, philosopher, or poor man’s friend, he might have been swallowed up in the ruck; as a photographer he has earned both fame and money, and is still on the road after more.
Mr. Barrie was for a long time a member of staff of Stewart and Co., in the well-known premises in Bourke street, Melbourne. That firm owned four galleries, and was for a lengthened period the largest concern of the kind in Australia. Ten years after he became connected with it, Mr. Barrie purchased the business for himself for £5OOO, and went on accumulating wealth and reputation, some items under the latter heading being the capture of the four highest awards at the Juvenile Exhibitions held in Melbourne, Ballarat, Sandhurst and Geelong. Two years ago, in conjunction with a partner, Mr. Barrie also purchased the business carried on for some years by Grouzelle and Co., and this is now known under the name of “Talma and Co.”, opposite the Town Hall in Swanston street, Melbourne. The “Talma Studio”, as it is called, has a reputation peculiarly its own, it being the only photographic gallery in the colonies in which the electric light is established as a medium for illuminating sitters. The E.L. studio is open every evening from seven to nine pm. It is largely patronized, and the work turned out is high-class in every sense. Talma and Co. claim to own the largest camera in Australia, it being constructed to carry a plate fifty by forty inches, and those used in it are of plate glass, and sensitized by T. Baker and Co., of the well known “Austral Laboratory” at Abbotsford, Melbourne.
Mr. Barrie is not a gentleman who cares to talk much about himself, and it is likely that much of what might be said to his credit is left over to be chronicled in larger type elsewhere; but it is on record that he is an old student of the Melbourne National Art Gallery and the Melbourne School of Chemistry. He is, also, vice-president of the Victorian Photographic Society and one of the judges of the Amateur Photographic Association of Victoria.
A. BARRIE