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Welcome to Photoria — a website that sheds light on the role of women in the history of Australian photography between 1850 and 1950.

1800s Behind the Camera

As far back as the 1850s, in Australia the men and women behind the camera worked together in studios, as travelling photographers, as business partners, and as competitors. They were reliant on each other’s skills to build up a successful business and turn a profit. This is not to imply that there was a greater degree of equality within this industry as compared to others, as women were legally paid less than their male counterparts. And, unlike their male counterparts who littered the pages of the popular and trade press, women were virtually ignored by the press with only rare exceptions. Such exceptions were praised and recommended by the journalist who found merit in their work.

1900s Women in Photography

Praised or ignored, who were these women and what jobs did they perform in their photographic careers? In the mid nineteenth century the women who worked in photography in Australia were often part of a family business. There were however, across the continent, a number of women who engaged in the business of photography on their own terms. These women were trailblazers, and as the decades rolled on the idea of a woman working as the principal photographer became more and more of a reality. In fact, by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries photography was recommended as a suitable career for women along with dressmaking, secretarial and retail work – but only until they married.

Careers in Photography

From the turn of the twentieth century and beyond there were high profile women photographers whose names were emblazoned on studio shopfronts, printed on their photographs, and periodically noted in the press. Then there were women who worked as colourists, retouchers and finishers, all of whom guaranteed a high quality output for the client.

And in the nineteenth century particularly there was the need for dressers, hairdressers and posers—women who saw to it that a sitter was suitably dressed, coiffed and posed to ensure the final image represented the best of the sitter. Today, such work comes under the umbrella term of stylist.