[BLUE MOUNTAINS] Devil’s Coach House / Jenolan Caves

Circa 1889. Two albumen print photographs, each 210 x 150 mm, laid down on their original album leaf of thick card, contemporary calligraphic captions in red ink to the mount beneath each image, “Devil’s Coach House” / “Jenolan Caves” [Carlotta’s Arch]; the prints are in good condition, with slight loss of contrast and some light motting from the printing process.

Charles Kerry’s photographs of the Jenolan Caves were first published in Samuel Cook’s The Jenolan Caves : an excursion in Australian wonderland (London, 1889). Independently of another Sydney photographer, Charles Bayliss, Kerry had experimented with flash light photography in the cave complex, with exceptional results. Electric lights had been installed in the caves as early as 1880 – Jenolan’s caves were the first in the world to be illuminated by electricity – and by the time Cook’s book was published Jenolan had become a major tourist destination, safely protected by government legislation.