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Photography
Beattie, John Watt (1859–1930), photographer and antiquarian, was born in Aberdeen and migrated with his family in 1878. From 1882 he was a full-time professional photographer whose work shaped the accepted visual image of Tasmania. Like Piguenit, he stressed the wildly romantic aspects of the island’s beauty and, as the colony’s official photographer from 1896, made a significant contribution to the emerging tourist industry. He produced postcards, lantern-slides, framed prints and albums, his work was featured on Tasmanian pictorial stamps, and he opened a popular museum of art and artefacts in Hobart. In 1912 he developed Roald Amundsen’s plates taken on the first trek to the South Pole. The Queen Victoria Museum and the Tasmanian Museum hold much of his collection.
Wendy Rimon
Further reading: Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 7.
Davis, Neil (1934–85), combat cameraman, was born at the remote hamlet of Nala in the Southern Midlands. He started his career as office boy in the Tasmanian Government Film Unit, and went on to become the most respected war journalist of his time. His biggest scoop was in capturing the quintessential moment at the fall of Saigon when tank 843 broke through the gates of the presidential palace. Davis’ philosophy of life and combat is evident in the motto written in each work diary he kept in Southeast Asia from 1964 to 1985: ‘One crowded hour of glorious life/ Is worth an age without a name’. Davis died in Bangkok when he was caught in crossfire during a failed coup attempt. He is immortalized in David Bradbury’s documentary Frontline.
Wendy Rimon
Further reading: Tim Bowden, One Crowded Hour: Neil Davis – Combat Cameraman Sydney, 1987.
Dombrovskis, Peter Herbert (1945–96), photographer, was the first Australian to be inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame in Oklahoma, USA. Peter’s photograph of Rock Island Bend was instrumental in the Australian High Court decision not to dam the Franklin River. Peter was born of Latvian parents in a refugee camp in Germany. He emigrated to Australia in 1950 with his mother, and was educated in Hobart. Strongly influenced by Lithuanian-Australian conservationist and photographer Olegas Truchanas, he started taking photographs in the 1960s, and became a keen plantsman, gardener and environmentalist. His work has been published in the form of calendars, books and cards, and continues. His photographs are held in international, national, state and private collections. Peter died while photographing in southwest Tasmania.
Liz Dombrovskis (Mrs)
Further reading: Roger Butler (ed) The Europeans: emigré Artists in Australia 1930-1960 Canberra 1997; Peter Dombrovskis The Quiet Land Hobart 1977; Peter Dombrovskis Wild rivers: Franklin, Denison, Gordon Hobart 1983.
Smithies, Frederick (1885–1979), adventurous bushwalker and skier, a fearless climber and fine amateur photographer, whose passion for the bush was also expressed through administration. He was one of several prominent, middle-class Launcestonians whom the internal combustion engine introduced to the bush by 1920. Born in Ulverstone, Smithies possessed extraordinary energy and public spirit. He campaigned to popularise and preserve the Cradle Mountain – Lake St Clair highlands and as Scenery Preservation Board chairman for thirty years fostered Tasmania’s national parks. His black-and-white images of Cradle Mountain, including those of his 1936 Skyline climb, are among the most striking of Tasmanian ‘wilderness’. Smithies’ community leadership, and his efforts as a conservationist and tourism promoter, were recognised in 1946 by his receipt of an OBE.
Dr Nic Haygarth
Further reading: JG Branagan, A Great Tasmanian: Frederick Smithies, OBE, Launceston, 1984.
The Spurling family (Stephen I 1821–92; Frederick 1850–1942; Stephen II 1847–1924; Stephen III 1876–1962), photographers. Stephen I’s known output consists of rather primitive portraiture. Frederick worked in his father’s Hobart studio in the 1860s and 1870s, and operated a photographic studio in Fingal, 1924–37. Stephen II also worked in the family studio in the 1860s, before going to the goldfields in New Zealand and Bendigo. On his return, he set up a studio in Launceston where his collection of views were released as lantern slides, prints and postcards. He photographed early railway accidents, reputedly using a train carriage as a darkroom on location. Also noted for his ‘instantaneous photography’ of children, he is claimed to be the first in Tasmania to use dry-plate work. Stephen III joined the family business in 1902, and travelled to many remote areas for landscape photography. Much of his work survives, including probably the earliest extensive record of the Cradle Mountain and Western Tiers area, the first known shots of the Gordon and Franklin Rivers, a 1902 series of Ben Lomond in winter, and the earliest known aerial photos in Tasmania from 1919. His studio was the largest in northern Tasmania from the turn of the century until 1937.
Wendy Rimon
Further reading: Chris Long, Tasmanian Photographers 1840-1940: a Directory, Hobart, 1995.
These entries are from The Companion to Tasmania History that is being published by the Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies at the University of Tasmania.
It will be available for purchase in 2005, for further information contact, Dr Alison Alexander, email: Alison.Alexander@utas.edu.au, or phone 03 6226 2607.
This work was supported by the Bicentenary Grants Program.
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