The Australian Women's Register

Elsie Lambton is best known for her commercial work. Trained by Ada Driver, Lambton opened two photographic studios in Townsville during the Depression and WW2.

Sarah Chinnery was an amateur photographer known for her unique ethnographic photography of the Indigenous peoples of New Guinea, where she lived between 1921-1937. Despite the challenges she faced developing film in the tropics, Chinnery had many of her photographs published in the press, including the New York Times. Later in Australia the focus of Chinnery’s photography shifted to portraits of artists and floral studies.

Elsie Edna Tudor worked as a professional photographer at a variety of photography studios in Melbourne during the 1920s. Tudor used a Folding Pocket Kodak Camera.

Ada Armytage was the daughter of the wealthy pastoralist Charles Henry Armytage who owned Como House during the period 1865-1959. Her photographs document life within the stately house and amongst the social elite of the times.

Harriett Brims operated a number of successful photography studios in Queensland: the Britannia Studios in Ingham, c.1902-1903; as well as studios in Mareeba, Queensland, c.1903-1914.

Inspired by her newsreel photographer father, Adelie ‘Front Page’ Hurley is known as a pioneering woman press photographer; she was one of only three Australian women press photographers working in her time. She was fearless in pursuing her shots, and also fearless against the gender discrimination of her field, lasting over two decades in press photography. Her photographs include a diverse range of subjects, from army photography, vice squad busts, life at outback stations and taipan hunting.

As well as for her photography, Amelia Bunbury was noted for her hand carved furniture and for her work as a horse breeder. Bunbury’s amateur photographs document life on a remote station in Western Australia; her photography includes images of Aboriginal people living in the area that echo the conventions of anthropological photography of the time. She exhibited her work in Melbourne and was published in a number of Western Australian newspapers.

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.

Hedda Morrison was an ethnographic photographer who worked extensively in China, Borneo and later Australia, where she settled in 1967. She was influenced by Neue Sachlichkeit, or the ‘new realist’ style. Morrison’s photographs were widely disseminated in books, including the seminal Sarawak: Vanishing World, and Travels of a Photographer. Morrison was a resourceful photographer, using two car batteries to power her portable enlarger while without power for six years in Sarawak, and storing her negatives in an airtight chest using silica gel as a drying agent to overcome the perils of a tropical climate. Morrison worked largely in black and white, except for in the early 1950s.

Jill Crossley is regarded equally as a commercial and an artistic photographer. In addition to freelance advertising photography, Crossley has taken photographs in collaboration with ABC productions, the Craft Council of Victoria, and an Australian archaeological team in Pompeii. Crossley’s style has been described as an interplay of realism and abstraction. Her early camera was a 116 folding camera, and in 1959 she used a Mamiyaflex and a Fujica camera. In recent years Crossley has worked with a small digital camera with a zoom lens.

Joyce Waterhouse was an amateur Pictorialist landscape photographer. She travelled widely, taking photographs in India, Indonesia, New Zealand and North Africa, as well as of locations throughout Australia. She enlarged and printed her own photographs and was able to support herself financially with the sale of her travel photography. She exhibited her work in South Australia and Victoria.

Laura Praeger was one of only two professional women photographers working in Sydney in the 1890s. Praeger opened four studios between 1890 and 1895. Praeger was known for her portraits of Sydney’s wealthy elite, as well as for her landscape and architectural photography. Praeger’s portraits were known for their striking side lighting and the characteristic ease of their subjects. She produced Bromide prints and worked on large-scale photographs at every processing stage.

Elizabeth Louisa How is the earliest known Australian female amateur photographer. The subjects of How’s portrait photography include members of her merchant family, friends, staff, and visitors to the How’s family residence at ‘Woodlands,’ North Sydney. How’s landscape photography recorded views of Sydney Cove, Government House, Campbell’s Wharf, and views around her house and garden. How’s salted paper prints were developed using half-plate glass negatives.

Margaret Michaelis was a professional photographer who specialised in documentary photography, portraiture and dance photography. She trained in Vienna before living in Prague, Berlin and then Spain, associating with anarchic and other left-wing groups. Many of Michaelis’ European photographs documented everyday life in order to encourage progressive social critique. Michaelis fled Europe on the cusp of WW2 and eventually made her home in Sydney, Australia. Her photography in Australia was mainly studio portraiture, with a clientele of Jewish émigrés and members of the art community. Michaelis made use of natural light and natural poses in order to explore the psychological states of her subjects.

Mavis Walley was a Ballardong Noongar Indigenous woman who lived in the southern parts of Western Australia. An amateur photographer, Walley documented the lives of the Aboriginal people with whom she lived on a reserve in Goomalling, taking thousands of photographs between the 1950s to 1970s. These images offer a significant and rare perspective within the historical archive – a view of Aboriginal life from an Aboriginal person that is neither anthropological nor ethnographic in style. Walley used a Box Brownie camera.

Emily O’Shannessy was a professional portrait photographer during the mid to late nineteenth century in Melbourne. In 1864 she went into partnership with Henry Johnstone, regarded as Melbourne’s best photographer of the time. The Johnstone and O’Shannessy Studio emphasised realism rather than artistic manipulation. Their commissions ranged from inexpensive ‘cartes-de-visite’ portraits to large-scale photographs, including one of Australia’s first Prime Minister, Edmund Barton. The studio specialised in coloured, plain, and mezzotint portraits. O’Shannessey’s ‘Cartes-de-visite’ photographs took the form of albumen prints mounted on cards.

The Magistrates Court represents the first tier of the Queensland Courts system. It is the place where most criminal cases are first heard; it is also where most civil actions are heard. It deals with civil cases where the amount in dispute is $150,000 or less. Some minor family law matters are dealt with by the Court as too are matters covered by the Customs Act 1901, the Social Security Act 1991 and the Taxation Act 1953. The Court also hears the majority of domestic violence matters, and applications for child protection orders.

Olive Cotton is renowned for the pioneering photographic works she executed in the modernist style. In addition to Straight style, Cotton experimented with elements of Pictorialism. From the mid-1930s Cotton worked at the Max Dupain Studio in Sydney, where she experimented with close ups and lighting effects; during WW2 she ran this studio herself. As well as advertising and fashion photography, Cotton explored still life and landscape genres. In later life, she worked as a studio photographer in regional NSW, specialising in wedding photography and studio portraiture. After initially using a Box Brownie, Cotton used a Rolleiflex camera throughout her career.

Founded in 1991(?) by the Hon. Justice Jane Mathews AO of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, the Australian Association of Women Judges (AAWJ) is the Australian member association of the Washington DC-based International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ), a non-profit, non-governmental organization whose members represent all levels of the judiciary worldwide and whose activities are centred round support for women in the judiciary, and access to justice. The current president of the AAWJ is Her Hon. Judge Robyn Tupman of the District Court of New South Wales.

Rose Simmonds was a Brisbane-based photographer who was the only female member of the Queensland Camera Club. She consistently won prizes in competitions run by the club and by the Australasian Photo-Review. She worked in the Pictorialist style from 1926-1932, using the bromoil process to achieve romantic effects, and in the Modernist style from 1933-1940.

The Magistrates’ Court is the busiest court in Victoria, with 53 different locations around Victoria and handling approximately 90% of all cases which come before Victorian courts each year. It covers the main areas of: Criminal Matters and Traffic Offences; Money Claims and Civil Disputes; Family Law; Family Violence and Intervention Orders; Fines and Penalties, including the Infringements Court; Specialist Court Jurisdictions, including the Drug Court and Koori Court.

Ruth Hollick was a well-connected and award-winning society photographer based in Melbourne, whose work was exhibited throughout Australia and internationally. Hollick’s career spanned 70 years, and she is recognised as one of Australia’s most successful professional photographers. Hollick’s clientele included the Baillieus, the McCaugheys and the Hams. Hollick was also renowned for her portraits of children and fashion photography.

Mina Moore was a successful photographer who worked initially in New Zealand and then in Sydney and Melbourne. Together with her sister the she specialised in portraits of prominent people and artists, including society/celebrity portraits, with some wedding and children’s portraits. Mina Moore later set up her own studio in Melbourne and utilised unconventional backdrops, such as untreated hessian.

Ada Driver was one of the most successful woman photographers working in Brisbane in the early twentieth century. She owned her own studio, producing high-class portraiture and illustrative work. Driver used the latest processes, adding artistic colouring to produce soft-toned photographs, as well as producing images for magic lantern slides and stereoscopic photographs.

Bernice Agar was a highly successful portrait photographer based in Sydney, whose work featured prominent Australian society figures. Agar was also an early fashion photographer. Widely published, her glamourous works were characterised by a strong preference for artificial light and crisp outlines. Her technique favoured strong frontal lighting. Few of her society portraits survive today.

Alice Mills was a top-ranking commercial photographer working in Melbourne at the turn of the twentieth century. Her studio was considered one of the best in Australia for portraiture, which took an unusual and painterly approach to tinting, capturing the sitter’s colour scheme in watercolour before applying it as a tint. Her photographs were mainly gelatin silver prints.

Ester Baylis was a prize-winning Pictorialist photographer and an active member of the Adelaide Camera Club. Baylis’ focus was primarily architectural photography, having previously trained in architecture. Baylis initially used a Box Brownie camera, and with prize money purchased a Thornton Pickard enlarger and an Adams Minex camera. Baylis was the first woman photographer to be included in an Australian public collection.