Sarah Chinnery b. 1887

Also known as Sarah Neill
  • Artist (Photographer)
Photographer and diarist. Resident of Melbourne, Victoria and Port Moresby, New Guinea.
Name
Sarah Chinnery
Also known as Sarah Neill
Birth date
1887
Death date
1970
Death place
None
Gender
Female
Roles
  • Artist (Photographer)
Residence
  • Port Moresby, New Guinea
  • c.1920 Melbourne, Vic.
  • c.April 1919- c.1920 Cambridge, England, UK
  • c.1918- c.1919 Aylesbury, England, UK
Other Occupation
  • Dentist
  • Diarist
Arrival
  • 1920
Active Period
  • c.1901- c.1933
Cultural Heritage
  • Irish
Languages
  • English
Training
  • Cambridge, England, UK
Is Indigenous
No
Initial Record Data Source
  • Legacy data. Source 'unknown'

Photographer and diarist, was an Irish woman who had begun taking photographs as a hobby at the age of 14. She was a qualified dentist in Aylesbury in 1918 when she met E.W.P (Pearson) Chinnery, then in England with the Flying Corps. They married in April 1919 and lived at Cambridge where her husband was a research student. She attended some lectures and continued her photography. In Melbourne in 1920 she prepared for the tropics visiting people like Judge Hubert Murray and Ellis Rowan, then she and her husband went to Port Moresby, where Chin had a job with the New Guinea Copper Mining Company. Sarah learnt to ride and horse and build furniture. A hand-coloured photograph of the house (completed 1933) on Malaguna Road where they later lived is in NLA News July 1998, p.8, along with photographs of natives and native ceremonies.

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Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
associate of
Ellis Rowan
1848
Artist (Draughtsman), Artist (Painter)
spouse of
E. W. Pearson Chinnery
Non-Artist/Designer/Curator
associate of
Judge Hubert Murray
Non-Artist/Designer/Curator
(House on Malaguna Road)
Date
1933
Hand-coloured photograph.
Citations:
  • Fortune, Kate (ed.), (1998), Malaguna Road: The Papua and New Guinea Diaries of Sarah Chinnery, (Place: Canberra, ACT : National Library of Australia)
  • Hall, Barbara; & Mather, Jenni, (1986), Australian Women Photographers 1840-1960, (Place: Richmond, Vic. : Greenhouse Publications)