Rex Hazelwood b. 1886

Also known as Rex Hazlewood
  • Artist (Photographer)
Rex Hazelwood was known as a photographer. He trained as a Baptist Minister but abandoned his ministry in 1911 to work as a professional photographer.
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Photographer and Baptist Minister, was born in Dulwich Hill, Sydney. As a young minister in the Baptist Church, he began taking photographs of churches of his own and other denominations in the suburbs of Concord and Epping. His ministry ended in late 1911 and he then worked as a professional photographer from 1911 to the mid-1930s and again in 1956-57. He had a series of government contracts, the first to record the construction of the Commonwealth Government’s first wireless station at Pennant Hills, then the State Brick Works and Timber-Yard, and later many other industrial sites in the Strathfield-Ryde district.

During WWI Rex served in the first AIF. He was appointed an official war photographer in 1918-19. After the War, he recommenced his professional career, setting up a studio at Epping. His subsequent work included over 2,000 colour photos taken on an extended trip to Europe and Britain. When he died in March 1968, his photographic collection passed to his family, who donated over 1,000 of these, mainly glass-plate, negatives to the Mitchell Library. In 1995 his son Laurance published a monograph on Hazelwood, inspired by the many researchers, especially local historians, using his photographs. As well as a biography and the reproduction of a selection of his early photographs, it includes an index to the photographs in the Mitchell Library.

Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011

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