Captain Sweet’s colonial imagination: the ideals of modernity in South Australian views photography 1866 - 1886.
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Date
2015
Authors
Magee, Karen
Editors
Advisors
Foster, Robert Kenneth Gordon
Kimber, Mark
Kimber, Mark
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Thesis
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Abstract
Captain Samuel Sweet worked as an outdoor photographer in South Australia (including the Northern Territory) between 1866 and 1886. In Australian public libraries, museums and archives his photographs are consulted as objective visual documents. Their more recent appearance in public art galleries ascribes to them the status of art, obscuring the fact that Sweet was a commercial photographer whose subjects and style were directed by the colonial market. This thesis documents the extent and nature of Sweet’s oeuvre, and examines his photographs within the original context of their creation, including Sweet’s photography business, photographic practices, the photography market, the man himself and the colonial context in which (and for which) his photographs were created. It analyses his photographs as both images and as material objects, utilising scientific testing. It argues that, as a commercial photographer, an Englishman and a colonist participating in the creation of a new world, Sweet did not photograph colonial South Australia, but rather the ideal that was being sought in its creation. It identifies Sweet’s as the largest visual record of the South Australian colonial process and boom-time, and pinpoints the pitfalls awaiting researchers and viewers who mistake his photographs as simple objective documents or aesthetic objects. It argues that if we are to make better use of Sweet’s photographs today – as art objects or research sources – we must first understand them within the full context of their creation. It concludes that Sweet’s photographs mapped an ideal of modernity, rather than reality, onto photographic paper, and that when his work is approached from this perspective, we not only achieve a deeper insight into his work, but also into the world he was picturing.
School/Discipline
School of History and Politics
Dissertation Note
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, 2015
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This electronic version is made publicly available by the University of Adelaide in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. This thesis may incorporate third party material which has been used by the author pursuant to Fair Dealing exceptions. If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material you wish to be removed from this electronic version, please complete the take down form located at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/legals
2 volume set
2 volume set