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professional photographer, was born in Salem, Massachusetts. He was a younger brother of the itinerant photographer Perez Mann Batchelder who employed him on the Californian goldfields in 1853. Benjamin, his younger brother Nathaniel and a third brother, Freeman (see P.M. Batchelder), arrived at Melbourne from Boston in the Cahota on 21 February 1856 to join Perez, who had opened a Melbourne branch of the firm at 57 Collins Street East in 1854. Benjamin and Nathaniel set up their own studio at Sydney in 1858, but when Nathaniel died two years later Batchelder Brothers closed down. Benjamin moved to Sandhurst (Bendigo) and opened a studio in his own name loosely linked to the Melbourne family firm, now Batchelder & O’Neill .

Benjamin Batchelder soon became Bendigo’s leading photographer, a title hitherto held by Alexander Fox . In 1861 Gus Peirce was sent to Bendigo by Batchelder & O’Neill to help Benjamin meet his commission from the Sandhurst Borough Council to photograph the local mining scene for the 1862 London International Exhibition. Peirce noted: 'We were furnished with a little black push-cart holding the camera and other necessaries, and we were to get pictures of all objects of interest … the work was most disagreeable, owing to the heat and dust’. Batchelder’s Views of Bendigo , an album of 51 sepia photographs produced in 1861, is in the La Trobe Library.

In 1866 every shire and borough council in Victoria was invited to send 14 photographic views to the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition, framed together with 'the statistics of the district as a centre piece’. Benjamin Batchelder was commissioned to produce the photographs for the Shire of Korong. He took general views of Inglewood and its public buildings, mines and mining scenes ('including Claughton’s & Masterton’s crushing mills’) and a cave at Mount Kooyoora, 'the haunt of the notorious bushranger, Captain Melville’. The last was especially commended as 'a beautiful specimen of the photographic art’. Each photograph was 'bordered and lettered’ by the Shire Council surveyor, Mr Wynne, then framed by Mr Deslandes. The whole Victorian collection was shown together at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, where Korong’s effort was awarded an honourable mention, before being sent to Paris.

Throughout 1866 and 1867 Benjamin’s studio was in Temple Court, Pall Mall, Bendigo. His Photographic Rooms were advertised and illustrated in Stevens & Bartholomew’s Sandhurst … Directory for 1867 as: 'The largest, the cheapest & the best in the colony … Views of buildings &c. taken to order. Cartes de Visite and Portraits of every description, beautifully Tinted to order. Photographic Albums, Frames, Cases, Passepartouts, Lockets, Engravings &c., in great variety, AT LESS THAN MELBOURNE PRICES. Cartes de Visite sent to any part of the colony free of postage. B.P. Batchelder, Artist’.

Benjamin sold up and returned to the United States in 1868. He died at Stockton, California, on 16 November 1891. An infant son is buried in the Bendigo General Cemetery. The La Trobe Library holds the most extensive collection of his photographs, including an undated portrait of Perez (1860s).

Writers:

Cusack, Frank

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011