Circular Quay Sydney - Discussed by Elizabeth Hartrick

The Customs House clock shows 10 minutes to 2 in the afternoon. But, when was the photograph in this slide taken? Is it a Saturday? Who are those people disembarking at the Quay and where are they going in such a hurry? The Penny Ferry’s just arrived, men in neat suits and natty boater hats are making their way off the upper deck down a staircase that covers the great paddle wheel. One chap breaks into a trot to beat the rush coming off the lower deck, another taking a short-cut by jumping the railing and leaping directly onto the wharf. There seem to be only a few women. We can see one stepping off the lower deck near the paddle wheel staircase, perhaps she has a large parasol ready.

There is so much detail in this image, which is always the delight with old photographs and lantern slides: they pull you into a moment and raise so many questions. You could estimate a date from the partly constructed (or damaged?) dome in the background peeping over the grand and strangely ungrimey commercial buildings – Goldborough Mort & Co Limited. Unpacking the image will take you down a rabbit-hole of history and mystery.

What I find most intriguing is that someone has gone to some effort not just to record this moment in photographic form — from a carefully selected vantage point (where – that’s another question) — but then to make the photograph into a lantern slide, nicely mounted and bound. It is a snapshot image prepared and finished to screen for an audience as part of a larger lecture, narrative or exhibition. By Whom? And, for what purpose? To me, those are the slide's most intriguing mysteries. 

Elizabeth Hartrick's monograph, The Magic Lantern in Colonial Australia & New Zealand will be published by Australian Scholarly Publishing (http://www.scholarly.info) in December 2016.