Alfred R. Fenton was a keen amateur photographer who came to Victoria from Ireland. He had been studying medicine when his father died and turned instead to training as a policeman in London rising to the rank of First Class Sargeant. According to a 1949 memoir by his elderly daughter Mrs E.G. Stubbs,Melbourne, Fenton saw an advertisement for policemen to come to Australia and subsequently led a group of immigrants.
Fenton may well have spent a short period as a professional photographer before resuming his career in the police force in Melbourne. He was probably the Fenton who worked as the partner of Coldrey in Main Road, Ballarat, Victoria (next door to Bowe’s Horse Bazaar) in 1856, advertising collodion portraits (ambrotypes). Fenton & Coldrey also took views; their ambrotype of the Ballarat fire brigade was highly praised in the Ballarat Times. They are thought to be the first colonial photographers to advertise the pannotype (also in 1856), a collodion negative print on black leather which was promoted as convenient for posting. Although listed as photographers the following year, no further work is known from the partnership.after Fenton resumed work as a policeman and he continued to be an obsessive amateur photographer. Mrs E.G. Stubbs recollected that Fenton divided a room in his home into three parts: the window side being his studio, the others his darkroom and chemical store. Here he concocted perfumes which he exchanged for photographic chemicals from the local chemist. Obsessive about his hobby, he melted down the family silver, took over the kitchen stove to distill his brews and posed 'the girl who scrubbed the floors’ for hours while he tested his plates.
His daughter believed that Fenton was the first person to make and use dry plates in Australia but gives no dates. He was well known in the profession and numerous examples of his work were extant in 1949. Despite his amateur status, Fenton was president of the Photographic Society of Victoria before he died in 1887.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2022
