[Indigenous Australian Portraiture]

'Aboriginal Girl Carrying Water' [a studio tableau portrait photograph of an Indigenous woman wearing a fur 'apron' with a container on her right shoulder]

Sydney, 'Kerry Photo', [circa 1890s, but printed early in the twentieth century?].

A glossy gelatin silver photograph (207 × 160 mm), with the caption and photographer's details in the negative (we presume the four-digit number '1900' appearing before the caption to be a reference number, not a date).

The print has a crease across it a few centimetres from the top edge, noticeable mainly against the plain background to the right of the subject; overall in excellent condition.

Charles Henry Kerry (1857-1928) 'turned a small portrait studio into the colony's largest photographic organization. Kerry sold albums of high-quality pictures ... and sold prints to the public. In 1885 he was asked to prepare an exhibit of Aboriginal portraits and corroboree pictures for the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London' ('Australian Dictionary of Biography'). The University of Queensland has an album of indigenous images by Charles Kerry, one with the title 'Yendhah and Boona with an older woman'. We believe the subject of our portrait to be Yendhah, described as being 'from the Tumut area ... Southern Highlands, New South Wales'.

Item #123316

Price (AUD): $400.00
other currencies