Design and Art Australia Online

professional photographer and schoolmaster, probably came to the Swan River Colony aboard the Eglinton on 4 September 1852. He married Martha Hannah Ougden in Perth on 16 August 1856, some eighteen months after S.S. Evans had married her sister Ellen. Although continuing his profession of schoolmaster at Perth Boys’ School, Alfred became increasingly involved in photography after his brother-in-law set up a studio. He opened his own studio in 1858 in rooms near 'Mr Dickin’s new store’, advertising in the local newspaper that he would be in attendance there every day from 3 p.m. and on Saturdays from 9 a.m., hours obviously chosen to fit in with his teaching.

After being Acting Head from time to time, Curtis was officially appointed headmaster of the Perth Boys’ School in 1861, but another headmaster, William Adkinson, was appointed in February 1862 and Curtis’s services as a teacher were dispensed with. With four children to support, he continued to practise photography as his sole profession for some years despite increasing competition from other Perth photographers. On 23 February 1866 Mrs T.C. Gull was writing: 'before long [ Manning and Knight ] ... will be decidedly the best in the place. As it is they have got by far the best camera and they are so obliging that it is quite a pleasure to go to them. Very few go to Curtis now he is so disagreeable.’

Curtis did keep up with technological innovations. The collodion or wet-plate process had by now superseded the daguerreotype and he provided colonists with the popular carte-de-visite. His views of Perth were of good quality. Some beautiful photographs of the city were reproduced in the Western Mail in 1898 over his name. By 1874, however, he was working as a clerk in the public service. He died at East Perth on 25 February 1902.

Writers:

Erickson, Rica
Pheloung, Ann

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011