Monthly Archives: August 2007

Captain Hector Axup, brother-in-law

This gallery contains 10 photos.

In his “Unique Booklet” Hector roams over subjects as diverse as the launch of the last of the wooden three-deckers, the “Royal Albert” in 1854 which he witnessed as a school boy attending the Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich; the good looks of Princess Alexandra of Denmark; Darwinism; Biblical Geometria; the Apocalypse; the Launceston Marine Board; “British Israel Truth” and Zionism; and a final word on the attitude of Christian men to Disarmament. He was in the end both disillusioned and traumatised by the Great War (World War I). Continue reading

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The QVMAG, the NLA, Chris Long and A.H. Boyd

The Queen Victoria and Albert Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, seemed so intent on abrogating the name of Thomas J. Nevin as photographer from any association with its holdings of the “Port Arthur convicts” photographs which were exhibited there in … Continue reading

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The journey from Hobart to Port Arthur 1873-4

This gallery contains 2 photos.

The notice below was published in Walch’s Tasmanian Almanac in 1873, at a time when the Port Arthur prison site on the Tasman Peninsula, 60 kms from Hobart, was still in operation. The traveller from Hobart faced a frequently interrupted, … Continue reading

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NLA’s ‘Intersections’ with convict carte by Nevin

This gallery contains 11 photos.

Helen Ennis 2004 and the NLA collection … Intersections: Photography, History and the National Library of Australia By Helen Ennis ISBN 0 642 10792 0 pb, large format 270 b&w and colour photographs. 297 x 240mm 285pp Publisher: National Library … Continue reading

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Parkhurst Boys on board ‘The Fairlie’ 1852

This gallery contains 6 photos.

A Tasmanian pioneer family … Portraits by Thomas Nevin of his parents ca. 1871. Courtesy of © Denis Shelverton 2006-2007. ARR. Thomas Nevin’s father, John Nevin, served in the First of Foot in the West Indies, Royal Scots, and at … Continue reading

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The pauper on Thomas Nevin’s carpet & Brother Payne

This gallery contains 29 photos.

It is likely that the man photographed here standing on Thomas Nevin’s carpet was William Graves, and that Nevin photographed him in May 1875. This may not be the only photograph of William Graves taken by Nevin. There may have … Continue reading

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Young man with stereograph viewer

This gallery contains 1 photo.

Who is this? A photographer? It isn’t a portrait of Thomas Nevin, nor is this young man minus a beard Thomas’ younger brother Jack Nevin. But it is a portrait of a serious young man with a love of cameras … Continue reading

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Prison photographers: Nevin, Nettleton, and Crawford

This gallery contains 7 photos.

“‘I have the honor to inform you that in obedience to your instructions I visited the stockade on the 21st and the gaol on the 22nd inst. and likewise consulted the Sheriff and Superintendent of Convicts as to the best method of carrying out the wishes of the Government in regard to taking photographs of the prisoners in these establishments. I found in the stockade 147 and in the gaol 110 prisoners – of these say 120 in the stockade and 70 in the gaol, in all 190, would be such characters as the Sheriff or Commissioner of Police might desire to have photographs of for police purposes…” Continue reading

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Execution of Sutherland and Ogden

This gallery contains 12 photos.

The colouring of these cartes served two purposes: to render a more accurate image reflective of reality, i.e. blue for blue eyes, blue for the prison issue scarf, especially when the man was wanted on warrant; and to profit from the sale of the hanged man’s image to the press and the public. These were called “ornaments of colour”, a term used in reference to Nevin’s tinting of prisoner photographs in the Mercury newspaper account of Nevin’s incident with the “ghost” (December 4, 1880).

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Charles A. Woolley and H.H. Baily

This gallery contains 4 photos.

THE PHOTOGRAPHER COHORT Thomas Nevin belonged to a cohort of Tasmanian professional photographers of the 1860s-1880 which included his two partners Alfred Bock who was an accomplished sennotypist (until 1867) and Samuel Clifford whose output of stereographs was prodigious (1860s-1878). … Continue reading

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