Historical Photographs of Tasmania

About Historical Photographs of Tasmania

This site shows the many great historical photographs of Tasmania that were taken from the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s. This was the great period of early photography. Historical photographs of Tasmania were initially just historical documents, but many of them were good and very good photographs in their own right rather than just support to a place’s history. Early photographs when they got it right, given the the large plate cameras used,were technically superior to the even digital cameras of today. Photographers took many technically perfect historical photographs of Tasmania. The major photographers featured, were Beattie, Spurling, Crawford Smithies.

In the early period of Australian photography, Tasmanian photography was richer, more prolific, having Australia’s first art exhibitions, and probably more artistic than anything produced at the time in the larger population centres, such as Sydney. Mainly this reflected the larger number of amateur artists and photographers living in Tasmania. In Tasmania there was an established tradition of gentlemanly pursuit of the arts which was supported by their affluence and their interest in the subject matter of an attractive landscape; familiar, cool and reminiscent of Europe. Many of Australia’s early photographers also made it a point to travel to Tasmania.