amateur photographer and medical practitioner, was an enthusiastic amateur photographer in Ipswich, England, before he came to Tasmania in 1854 as medical officer on the first voyage of the steamship City of Hobart . He brought a half-plate camera he had made himself and was taking portraits in Launceston with it soon after his arrival. At the end of 1854 or early in 1855 he photographed his nephew Henry Button together with Button’s wife, Emma. Button thought Emma’s portrait 'perfect’ but said his own was 'slightly out of focus’ although he later included a print from it in his reminiscences, Flotsam and Jetsam .
Clarke’s photographic activities are known only from Button’s books. He apparently abandoned photography after selling his camera to his nephew and moving to Melbourne in 1858. Button claimed that Clarke introduced 'what is now known as photography’ – the wet-plate process – to Tasmania. But as Button called another Clarke portrait of Emma Button a 'glass positive’, some at least appear to have been unique ambrotypes, a wet-plate or collodion positive rather than negative process.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
