professional photographer and civil servant, was born near Belfast, Ireland. He was apprenticed in 1863 to Alfred Bock. From 1867 until the end of 1875 he worked as a commercial photographer from Alfred Bock 's former studio at 140 Elizabeth Street, Hobart. In the 1860s the firm became Nevin & Smith. Robert Smith’s partnership with Nevin was dissolved in 1868. The bulk of the practice was the normal one of taking views, mainly of and around Hobart, like the stereo photo New Town from the Public School (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery), and carte de visite studio portraits, such as the hand-coloured cartes-de-visite in the Archives Office of Tasmania, the QVMAG and in private collections. Larger commissions included photographing the full range of coaches used by Samuel Page’s firm in the early 1870s, and convict identification mugshots for the Municipal Police Office, Hobart town Hall held at the NLA, the QVMAG, TAHO, and the TMAG.
Seventy cdv identification photographs of Port Arthur convicts taken in about 1874 (Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery), two years before the settlement was closed, have been attributed to Nevin because several of them carry his studio stamp. These were exhibited t the QVMAG in 1977, as Nevin’s work. Chris Long, however, believes he was merely the printer or copyist of these and claims that the Port Arthur commandant A.H. Boyd was the sole Port Arthur convict photographer. Professional photographers, however, were employed to take identification photographs in mainland Australian prisons from the beginning of the 1870s ( see Charles Nettleton ) and these Port Arthur portraits fit the genre. Moreover, the darkroom Boyd authorised in the Port Arthur garden was not necessarily for his own use; no photographs taken by him have been identified.
Nevin’s commercial photographic stock and negatives were purchased by Samuel Clifford at the end of 1875 and on 8 January 1876 the studio was advertised for lease. 'Mr Thomas Nevin, photographer’, had been appointed over twenty-three other applicants to the office of keeper at the Hobart Town Hall following the death of the former keeper Mr Needham. Despite a tendency to drink on duty, he remained in the position until 3 December 1880, when he was dismissed for being drunk the previous evening. The more serious charge for which he had been arrested, that he was associated with (or was) a figure in phosphorescent clothing who had been terrorising local residents by appearing late at night as a ghost, was dismissed for lack of evidence. Nevin continued working for the Municipal and Territorial Police until 1888.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2013
