Design and Art Australia Online

amateur photographer and settler, is claimed in the Aldine History of Queensland (1888) to have been 'a co-worker of the famous Daguerre’ (unsubstantiated) and 'the first photographer in the colonies’ (incorrect). He came to New South Wales in 1849 with his wife Emily and settled at Queanbeyan. Although intending to set up a professional photographic practice, the problems of providing for his family and the difficulties in obtaining photographic supplies prevented this. According to Lea-Scarlett, he died prematurely in 1857 before taking any views of the town. He was survived by his wife and two sons, Alex and Eddie (Edward Thomas Burder Hutchison), the latter becoming a professional photographer in Brisbane. His widow remarried and her son, Philip Morton Walker (b. 1867), also became a professional photographer in Queensland.

On 14 January 1856 Emily Hutchison sent a daguerreotype of herself, her husband and Alex to her parents in London which had been taken at Queanbeyan in December 1855 by the travelling photographer Insley . She was very disappointed with the images of herself and Alex and said that Edward was going to re-do them once he could 'procure all the material’. No surviving portraits are known either, but Hutchison is more likely to have taken them than views. There is some speculation that the Aldine information must have come from Eddie, who was obviously convinced that his father had actually practiced photography in Australia, though admittedly he was only born the year his father died.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011