Photographic portrait of three Kanak women, New Caledonia, late 1870s

Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 105 x 65 mm (mount), verso with studio imprint of ‘E. H. Dufty, photographer, Noumea, Nouvelle Caledonie’; the albumen print is slightly faded, the mount with some pale foxing.

Edward Henry Dufty (1850-1905), the son of Bath photographer Francis Dufty and his wife Martha (née Stow), left England for Australia in 1865 with his elder brother Francis (Frank) Herbert. While in Australia, Edward worked as a travelling photographer in Victoria. Along with his brother Walter, who came to Australia in 1871, Edward settled in New Caledonia in the early 1870s, where the pair set up a portrait studio. Their brothers Frank and Alfred established themselves in Fiji from 1871. At their studio in Noumea, Edward and Walter devoted much attention to photographing the indigenous Kanak people of New Caledonia. After 1875, when Walter left New Caledonia for Norfolk Island, Edward continued to run the Noumea studio by himself; the studio imprint on portraits from the late 1870s bears his name alone.