Design and Art Australia Online

professional photographer, came from Michigan, USA. After 'travelling through the principal capitals of the western hemisphere’ he reached Brisbane in June 1857. Claiming to be taking portraits for a few days only but remaining for 20 months, he set up business in the South Brisbane residence previously occupied by Henry Goodes , advertising his versatility in 'either the Glass, Paper, Plate or Improved System Process’ and offered lessons in photography. By November he had fitted out 'a splendid sky light Gallery’ over Peterson’s store in Stanley Street, South Brisbane, and was selling portrait photographs (presumably ambrotypes) for the hefty sum of 10s each.

When his rival E.T. Brissenden departed for Ipswich in March 1858, Bennett moved into his excellent gallery in George Street, North Brisbane after apparently making a quick trip to Sydney to renew supplies. He opened with a new range of photographs on display and advertised: 'Something New! THE MELAINOTYPE! or Photograph upon Iron Tablets’ (tintypes were being advertised under this name in Sydney by Thomas Glaister and Batchelder Brothers early in 1858). His speciality, however, was stereoscopic photography.

While other early photographers at Moreton Bay can be classified as basically portraitists, townscapists or landscapists with more or less emphasis on technique, Bennett straddled the fields and has emerged as a nineteenth-century equivalent to the modern photojournalist. He claimed to have come to Brisbane specifically 'to take a number of views of the scenery, and likenesses of the aborigines for the London Exhibition’, and it was to this end that he toured the Darling Downs in 1857. He returned to South Brisbane by the end of the year 'for the purpose of completing his collection of views, &c, of North and South Brisbane’, which, he said, together with some Aboriginal groups were intended for the Illustrated London News – presumably to be turned into engravings for a feature article on Queensland’s recent separation into a new British colony.

In 1858 he moved north 'for the purpose of completing his collection of stereoscopic views of the interior of Northern Australia’, visiting Gayndah, Wide Bay and Port Curtis (Gladstone) where he was also available for the usual 'pictures of stations, landscapes, houses, likenesses, families, children, &c.’ By 4 August he was back at Brisbane in a George Street studio opposite the Immigration Depot. Bennett became something of a favourite with the press, presumably partly because his images of Brisbane and the Moreton Bay district were so soon to put Queensland on the map internationally. Although preceded by photographers like Wheeler , he was the first professional known to have tackled Queensland subjects so specifically and comprehensively for more than a local market. Exactly how much of Bennett’s portfolio was ever completed, despatched or published, however, is unknown. Nothing attributed to him has been found in any English illustrated newspaper or in the 1862 London International Exhibition catalogue, although he might have exhibited under the banner of the London Stereoscopic Company, which by 1858 claimed to have 100,000 photographs from all parts of the world in stock.

After marrying Mary Teresa Greenwood in the Ipswich Catholic Church on 29 December 1858, Bennett departed for Sydney early in 1859. According to Sandy Barrie, he subsequently returned to Brisbane in a new role – as lessee of the Queensland Theatre – but was declared bankrupt on 22 March 1876. The following year, he appears to have been working as a travelling photographer once more, the firm of Bennett & H. Leslie being listed in the north, at Mackay. He resumed business at Brisbane in 1879-80 as W.T. Bennett & Co. and was managing the American Glacé Photographic Company at Rockhampton in 1881, when he took a view of the opening of the Fitzroy Bridge. He also photographed caricatures of local identities sketched by Louis Marcellin Martin , combining both bridge and caricatures in special souvenir cabinet cards (Rockhampton District Historical Society, on loan Capricornia Institute). An 1882 lithograph of a Rockhampton identity by H.G. Eaton was said to be after a Bennett company photograph.

As an 'artist well-known throughout Australia’, Bennett took over the photographic studio of T.H. Boyd at 252 George Street, Sydney in 1883, renaming it the San Francisco Palace of Art. He stated that the many certificates won at both Sydney and Melbourne exhibitions were testimony to his first-class portrait work. At the 1883-84 Calcutta International Exhibition W.F. [sic] Bennett of Sydney won a bronze medal for 'Photographs’ ( Argus 27 February 1884); the catalogue listing among the NSW Exhibits 'Class 5 – Photographs – no.12 Bennett, W.F. (late T.H. Boyd), San Francisco Art Gallery, 252 George-street, Sydney – Photographs’. Some time later Bennett returned to Rockhampton and was still working there in 1891.

Writers:

Fisher, Rod
Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011