Design and Art Australia Online

professional photographer, advertised the opening in August 1859 of Hall’s Ambrotype Portrait Rooms in Conness Street, New Ballaarat (as the company-owned mining sector of Chiltern, Victoria, was then called). The following July, the business was for sale. By December 1863 Hall was in Camp Street, Beechworth, running his third art union. Twelve 10 × 8 inch (25.4 × 20.3 cm) views of Stanley, Yackandandah, Chiltern, Wangaratta, Reid’s Creek Falls and the Woolshed were among the prize photographs which he valued at £20. A major prize was a large 15 × 37 inch (38.1 × 93.9 cm) photograph of Beechworth in a rosewood frame.

Like virtually all colonial photographers Hall was dependent for his livelihood upon photographic portraiture, and by 1864 his reputation in this field was well established. The Ovens and Murray Advertiser reported that he had 'taken the likeness of almost everyone in Beechworth in so many styles’ and that it had 'not seen likenesses from Melbourne or anywhere else to excel Mr. Hall’s for accuracy and beauty of finish’. Despite such accolades, Beechworth’s population of about 2000 proved a limited market. To overcome this he became a travelling photographer. Such an occupation, according to the Ovens and Murray Advertiser , had always been hampered by 'the difficulty of obtaining proper rooms’, so Hall constructed 'a set of rooms large and complete in every particular which could be taken to pieces in an hour and packed in a single waggon fitted for the purpose’. Thus equipped, he visited all the principal towns around Beechworth during the summer of 1864-65: Stanley, Albury, Chiltern, Rutherglen, Morse’s Creek, Wangaratta and Benalla. Until October 1865 Henry G. Thomas was employed as his assistant. 'Alzerno’ Hall (presumably Algernon) was listed at Ford Street, Beechworth, in the Beechworth Directory for 1866.

Along with the Chiltern photographer Henry Pohl , Hall photographed the bushranger Daniel 'Mad Dog’ Morgan lying dead in the woolshed at Peechelba Station in 1865. Realising the appeal of such an image, Hall immediately consigned hundreds of his cartes-de-visite to the local post office for transmission to 'the old country’ so as to afford people 'the opportunity of judging the appearance of the notorious Bushranger’. Hall’s portrait, together with Pohl’s photographs of Morgan and the man who shot him, gained extra circulation through S.T. Gill 's composite engraving of the scene for colonial newspapers.

Hall’s capacity to create photographic opportunities is evident in his letter to the Wangaratta Borough Council in 1866 informing them of his intended visit for the purpose of taking views of the town and district. When the resulting photographs were exhibited by the council at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition they received an honourable mention. Views taken for the Beechworth Borough Council were shown at the 1866 Ovens and Murray Exhibition before being sent on to Melbourne with 'other admirable views of the photographic art’ by Hall. In 1867 a set of Hall’s photographs which had been commissioned by the Beechworth Borough Council were taken to London by one of the councillors and deposited in the newly established Victoria and Albert Museum.

Hall left Beechworth in about 1869 and was working as a travelling photographer in Queensland during the 1870s. On 24 July 1875 he announced in the Copperfield Miner that he would be taking photographs in that town until 10 August. He then left for Wolfgang, Logan, Grosvenor, Oxford Downs and other northern stations, advertising his forthcoming tour in the Peak Downs Telegram on 21 August. He was at Miner Street, Charters Towers, from June to 29 December 1877; on a return visit in 1878-80 he set up a studio in Gill Street. A photograph of the police magistrate’s house at Cairns (1883) by A. Hall is in the Cairns Museum. 'C.’ Hall was listed at nearby Port Douglas in 1883-86, but 'Algernon’ Hall was there in 1888-89 and 1901.

Writers:

Ashley, Robert W. P.
Fox, Paul

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011