Scene on Middle Harbour, Sydney, 1858-59.

Stereoscopic albumen print photograph, each individual image 76 x 71 mm (arch-top format), original plain white mount 84 x 172 mm, recto with an erroneous lithographically printed caption ‘Wooloomooloo [sic] Bay, Pott’s Point, Sydney’; verso blank; both albumen prints are in fine condition, although a little dark; the mount is very clean and stable.

An insect-damaged example of this stereoscopic photograph is held in the SLNSW collection (PXB 334/no. 3), where it is attributed to William Hetzer and assigned the date 1858-59. What has not been previously noted about this image, however, is that it clearly relates to a carte de visite photograph in the AGNSW collection (Accession number 585.2014), of which we have provided an image for comparative purposes. Both photographs were taken in exactly the same spot, the camera pointing in the same direction. The AGNSW carte, which is approximately dated to 1865 (but which could well be earlier), bears a fully contemporary inscription on the verso: ‘Australian scenery, Middle Harbour, Port Jackson.’

A Middle Harbour location is obviously correct; the scene – a muddy foreshore at the head of a narrow inlet – has nothing to do with Woolloomooloo or Potts Point. We believe these photographs were possibly taken at the head of Willoughby Bay, looking north from what is today Primrose Park, with Folly Point on the left and Cremorne on the right. This was a just short walk along Willoughby Creek from Willoughby Falls, a popular spot in the nineteenth for picnickers, artists and photographers.

The treeline on the left is at a similar height in both photographs, suggesting that the pair are likely to have been taken within the space of only a year or two; the logs have moved around in the mud (probably dragged by human hands as much as by the tides), but otherwise the scenes are eerily similar, with the notable exception of the tidal pool and its sublime reflection of the young girl in the AGNSW carte. What is perhaps most noteworthy though, is the fact that in both images the photographer has placed two figures in precisely the same positions, which prompts the question: did Hetzer take both this stereoscopic photograph and the anonymous AGNSW carte de visite?

In 2015 the AGNSW carte was included in its major exhibition The Photograph and Australia. The photograph featured as the frontispiece plate in the eponymously titled catalogue (Sydney : AGNSW, 2015, p. 8), and was voted by visitors the most popular photograph in the exhibition.