Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

Stafford, Manchester, England, UK

Biography

professional photographer and draughtsman, was born on 26 June 1834 at Manchester, England. While working as an apprentice in a patents’ office as a youth, he built a camera obscura from cigar boxes and spectacle lenses. Afterwards he trained as a civil engineer. He learned to take collodion photographs before leaving from Liverpool for Victoria on 6 July 1852, attracted by the gold-rush. Arriving at Melbourne in the Serampore on 9 October 1852 and finding that thousands had preceded him to the goldfields, Woodbury earned a living as a carrier of goods and a cook for a few weeks, then became an assistant surveyor with the government, taking photographs as a hobby with an adapted camera obscura he had purchased locally. On 30 January 1853 he wrote to his mother that he could 'at last manage to take a good likeness, now I never have a failure’, and that he was teaching Dawson, the surveyor for whom he was working, to take photographs too. On 30 June he enclosed 'a bit of a sketch of our tent which although is not very good will give you some idea of it’. In August a small plan of the township he had been surveying, Buninyong near Ballarat, was sent home. In January 1854 Woodbury moved to Melbourne and worked as a draughtsman with the Commission of Sewers and Water Supply. He was still taking photographs, but rather less frequently because of the pressure of work. At a time when the daguerreotype process remained dominant in Australian photography, Woodbury was employing the collodion wet-plate process which he had learnt in England, becoming one of the colony’s earliest practitioners. He produced both paper prints and ambrotypes. As a 'Mechanical draughtsman’ of 78 Flinders Lane East, he had nine ambrotype views of Melbourne for sale in the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition which were awarded a second-prize medal. These may relate to the two- and eight-section paper panoramas of Melbourne which survive in his Australian album and are dated in his hand 1853 and 1854 (possibly years later). On 30 December 1854 Woodbury informed his mother that he was 'once more without a situation … and with not the least chance of getting it’, so had decided 'to turn photographic artist’ professionally. He set up in partnership with a Mr Spencer , to whom he had taught photography, and they proposed to travel around the diggings taking portraits. He thought his medal displayed in a showcase would 'do a little’. The venture, however, was not a success and Woodbury set up on his own at North Melbourne. By September 1855 William Davies was managing the studio and Woodbury was earning £4 a week at Batchelders, the leading daguerreotype establishment in Melbourne, Perez Mann Batchelder having assured him that he was 'the best glass artist in Melbourne’ Woodbury told his mother. At Batchelders he took a likeness of the visiting actress Lola Montez 'for myself’. Meanwhile he was 'rapidly filling up a nice album with photographic views which when completed I shall send to you’. In October 1855 he included a small parcel of (paper) self-portraits and ambrotype views in his letter home, and a stereoscope by Batchelder which 'is I think the best thing in the photographic line I ever saw … The glass ones are mine but they are not specimens of my best. I was rather late or I should have sent you a large glass picture as mine are acknowledged by all who see them to be superior to anything in England or America’. By February 1856 he was planning to relocate his studio in town, having almost run out of sitters at North Melbourne but apparently set up at Ford Street, Beechworth (Vic.), instead, being listed there in the Ovens Directory for 1857. By June he had a studio at Batavia, Java (Indonesia), in partnership with a Mr Page, where he wrote in September that he was getting very good prices for portrait photographs, from 13s or 14s up to £10 a piece, the latter being coloured by an artist who received half the fee. This was a great contrast to Melbourne where, Woodbury had earlier commented, a rival had started up who charged only 2s 6d for a paper portrait, even if this was, naturally, vastly inferior. Woodbury sent home a few stereoscopic slides he had taken in Melbourne with his September letter, adding that although he was continuing to take both glass (ambrotype) and paper views in Java, henceforth he would forward only paper prints. One was reproduced in the Illustrated London News on 15 October 1859, and a collection of his stereos was issued by the London photographic firm of Negretti & Zambra in 1861. Having married in Java, Woodbury returned to England in 1863, although the firm of Woodbury & Page continued to operate successfully in Java for many years. A prolific inventor, Woodbury filed twenty patents for improvements in photographic apparatus between 1864 and 1884, including one for his 'Woodburytype’ process, a particularly fine and detailed photo-mechanical technique he patented in 1865. It was used widely for illustrations in high-quality books until about 1880. The drawback of the Woodburytype was that it required special ink to be printed, so that separate plates had to be added to books. Although its reproduction quality was superior, it was eventually replaced by more convenient processes which could be printed with the same ink as the letterpress. Woodbury used the process to photograph paintings and sculptures in many major European art galleries which he sold all over the world. He publicised his inventions, mostly made in his Manchester studio, through numerous articles in professional journals and papers delivered to learned societies. Woodbury died at Margate, Kent, on 5 September 1885 from an accidental overdose of laudanum. The British Royal Photographic Society archives at Bath hold his only known surviving Australian works, an album of photographs taken in 1853 57 (now disassembled) containing views of Victoria and Java and an albumen silver paper self-portrait showing him posed in front of his camera. His son, Walter E. Woodbury, was also an active photographer. Writers: Kerr, JoanNewton, GaelWillis, Anne-Marie Date written: 1992 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 26 June 1834

Summary

Trained as a civil engineer, Woodbury honed his photography skills on the goldfields of Melbourne before making his way as a professional photographer to Indonesia and back again to his country of birth, England.

Gender

Male

Died

5 September 1885

Age at death

51