Sit. Pose. Snap. Brisbane Portrait Photography 1850 – 1950

Overview

Before we were all capturing selfies on our phones and uploading them to Instagram seconds later, posing for a photo was a serious affair. Given that getting your portrait taken involved a trip to a photographer's studio, that's understandable. Still, when commercial outfits popped up in Brisbane in the 1850s, plenty of folks were eager to get their picture snapped. It seems some things really don't change.

Sit. Pose. Snap. Brisbane Portrait Photography 1850 – 1950 steps through the images that resulted, drawing from an extensive private collection of portrait photography and featuring hundreds of Brissie folks in original photos from the period. So, how did snaps differ then? What changed over the course of a century? How were portraits displayed? What types of milestones and occasions did they chronicle? And did anyone pull duck face? From March 24 to July 30, the Museum of Brisbane has the answers.