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They carry the imprint of W, J. Norman , Looking Glass and Picture Frame Manufacturer , Elizabeth Street , Melbourne .
The bookshop says these photographic reproductions of saucy prints,lithographed by Gustave Barry (1848-1882) after Philippe-Jacques Linder (1835-1914), published by Norman around 1870, would be considered fairly innocuous by most of us today in terms of their sexual content.
Yet there could be little doubt that they would have shocked the sensibilities of Melbourne’s conservative society of the time.
For this reason , they provided an interesting case study of what publishers in colonial Melbourne could get away with, as well as illustrating how outré material of this type was marketed.
Other subjects covered include - Ballarat goldminers, the Eureka Rebellion , Australian- New Zealand boxer Otto Cribb circa 1901, bricklayers , the Bendigo Pottery Depot, a 1907 Broken Hill dust storm , a novelty photo of two men in a mock aeroplane flying over Luna Park,St. Kilda , a swagman sitting on his swag, a billycan and knife nearby, a jockey, a West Australian anthill , Afghan cameleers in the WA goldfields, ,the Melbourne Club, rabbit trappers.
There is a hand-tinted shot of the camp of Aboriginal miner Benny Roy , at Wortupa, on the goldfield in the Gammon Ranges , south of Arkaroola, South Australia . Possibly taken as early as 1890, it is priced at $650. An earlier photo of Victorian Aborigines in a canoe is listed at $1650.
A series of photographs depicting Queensland fruit and trees- bananas ,papaw , Jacaranda , etc.- apparently part of a promotion by the Queensland Tourist Bureau , all sold , almost as quickly as the risque pix .
A Crookwell Rifle Club Shoot , $100 , taken about 1907 in the southern tablelands of NSW, was the work of multi-skilled professional photogapher Herbert Blackadder . He was also a dentist, a chemist and refereed rugby matches .
