Known as ‘Ebb’, Ebenezer Marchant was born at Latrobe, Tasmania, on 8 December 1887. He married Elvira Elsa Klaebe on 2 September 1922 and together they had a son born in 1923. Ebenezer was the son of Philip Marchant and part of the large South Australian family that spanned three generations of photographers, and a fourth generation associated with the field also. His brother Samuel Bowering Marchant and son Trevor Marchant were both photographers. One of his granddaughters, Coralie, was a colourist, whilst another granddaughter, Janine, was a technician in a photo laboratory. Before Ebenezer turned three years old, his mother died. When he was eight, his father moved the family back to Gawler, where Philip re-established his career as a local photographer, and it was in his father’s studio that Ebenezer worked.
In the years leading up to his father’s death in 1910, Ebenezer took on various responsibilities in the studio, eventually taking on the running of the business. He is credited with producing a one-piece, 180 degree panoramic photograph with the use of a Cirkut panoramic camera in the late 1920s. The enlargement he produced measured six feet in length and ten inches in width.
Ebenezer is recorded as having many talents and interests including conjuring, hypnotism and gardening. He also enjoyed music and was skilled in playing the organ, piano and violin.
Though his son Trevor continued the photographic tradition for some time, his move from Gawler to Adelaide to pursue printing and processing marked the end of the family’s link with studio portraiture.
- Writers:
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- Date written:
- 2013
- Last updated:
- 2013
