The Australian Women's Register

Helena Warren was known for her press photography and trompe l’oeil postcard images. She worked in the goldfields district, supplementing the family income with the income of her commercial work. Entirely self-taught, her first camera was an Austral Box quarter-plate camera.

Joan Barbara Isaacson is a professional photographer who worked with the Army Public Relations section of Australian Women’s Army Service, and was later known for her portraiture of children.

Joy Falls was a commercial photographer whose professional work was primarily based in Sydney. Falls was the earliest woman photographer to have worked with colour processing in Australia.

Judith Fletcher is remembered for being one of the first women portrait photographers to work in Sydney (along with May and Mina Moore) and to establish her own studio.

Kate Ivens was an early, amateur ethnographic photographer of Indigenous people. She also photographed flora and fauna.

Lilias Lenne specialised in darkroom work. She also photographed weddings, and is said to have been the first photographer to fully document weddings.

Lilian Louisa Pitts (L.L.P.) was a professional photographer working in northern Victoria. L.L.P was known for her thematic photographic albums, her postcards, and for capturing the life of the community in which she lived.

Lily Kingsborough was an amateur photographer who is best known for her studies of flowers.

Lucy Craigie was an amateur travel photographer who was active throughout Australia during the 1930s.

Mabel Arblaster was a professional portrait photographer who worked in Eaglehawk, where she opened a studio.

Mabel Hookey was the first woman journalist in Tasmania. She was also a poet, a painter and an amateur photographer.

Madge Massingham was a professional photographer who operated her own studio. During WW2 Massingham became involved in the Women’s Air Training Corps’ photographic section.

Margot Donald worked as a commercial photographer in Sydney and London. Donald was known at the time as one of the best colourists working in Sydney.

Marie Anne Tuck is mainly known for her paintings. Tuck was the first Australian woman to win honours at the Paris Salon. She worked as an artist, teacher and at a photography studio, in Western Australia. She exhibited in Paris, Western Australia, Adelaide, South Australia and New South Wales.

Heather George was a commercial photographer who began her career in Sydney, and also worked in Melbourne and regional Victoria. George was known for her industrial, fashion and outback photography.

Mattie Hodgson worked as a retoucher, colourist, and camera operator from the mid-1920s. She worked in Western Australia and London.

Helen Mackay worked at a photography studio in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, where she specialised in portraiture.

Amelia Butler lived and worked in Tenterfield, NSW during the 1890s. Although she went on to become a successful studio photographer based in Sydney, Butler is best known for the photographs she took of Tenterfield and the surrounding districts in the 1890s.

Anne Firmstone was an early ethnographic photographer whose work documents life on a Melanesian mission on Norfolk Island during the 1890s. An amateur photographer, Firmstone’s photographs record the impact that the arrival of missionaries had on the lives of Indigenous people on the island. She also photographed the native flora of the island.

Doris Barnes was an award winning amateur photographer who practised photography throughout her life, active from the 1910s to the 1990s. Her photographs were predominantly created in the Pictorialist style. She was a life member of the Adelaide Camera Club, exhibited in Adelaide and interstate, as well as in London. The Art Gallery of South Australia acquired some of her portraits as early as 1940.

Known as D.C., Dorothy Coleman was a successful commercial photographer known for her photographs of society people in Brisbane. An innovative photographer, D.C. was highly sought after for the effects she could achieve in portraiture and dance photography. D.C.’s photography was published widely in newspapers and magazines of the time. She employed and trained a number of women photographers and colourists in her photographic studio.

Dorothy Davidson is known for modernist style photographs which captured life on board cruising ships.

In 1935, Nancy McPhee became the first Tasmanian woman to be admitted to the bar.

Elizabeth Hall was one of two women (the other being Judith Hoare) to become the first women lawyers appointed to the Queensland Solicitor-General’s Office as legal officers. Appointed on 17 June 1976, she worked in the Conveyancing Branch. She was later appointed magistrate.

In 1982 Heather Sculthorpe became the first Tasmanian Aboriginal to obtain a law degree, from the University of Tasmania. She established a career in the administration of Tasmanian Aboriginal organisations. In 2016 she was Chief Executive Officer of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.

In 1931 Helen Ida Dunbar became the first woman to graduate from University of Tasmania Law School.

Dorothy St John was an amateur photographer who was trained by her father, a street photographer. Her photographs record the everyday life in rural Western Australia.