Aspects of place: the Queensland images of colonial photographer Richard Daintree
Abstract
Richard Daintree was a photographer and geologist who spent the years 1864 to 1870 in North Queensland. Close to unique, Daintree’s Queensland photographs form an exceptional body of work, significant for its size and representation of the early colonial period. He was the first European to make photographs that visually engaged with the dry tropical inland, and was one of very few Europeans creating any form of visual record in such remote locations. Daintree’s photographs are from on and beyond the frontier of European colonial expansion that dispossessed Aboriginal people of their land. Particularly, his images of Aboriginal people illustrate the complexities of relationships with Europeans. This thesis uses primary sources to analyse and contextualise Daintree’s photographs and answers the question of what place meant to him, determining three key aspects. The first was an experiential understanding of place, both in the pastoral industry and in his geological work. The images tell a personal story of life on the Queensland frontier, as he was involved in the earliest pastoral development. They also speak of a relationship with science, and document expeditions researching geology he saw as new. The second aspect of place involved the representing of Queensland to an international audience. In the six months prior to Daintree’s departure from Queensland, he took many photographs specifically to interpret place for others, focussing on the nascent pastoral and mining industries. Finally, a third aspect of place considers the expectations of that wider audience and Daintree’s attempts to cater to those expectations.