George Freeman rules big photographic scene in Adelaide from 1860s with skill, innovation and showmanship
King William Street, Adelaide city, around the 1870s, one of the city views taken by professional photographer and entrepreneur Gerge Freeman (top right). Bottom right: Freeman's portait of an unidentified Aboriginal child.
Images courtesy Pamela Goodhart Dodd (great dranddaughter of George John Freeman) and Andrew Dodd
Adelaide launched George Freeman's 34-year 19th Century career bringing skill, showmanship and innovation to the huge Australian photographic industry, outdoing the local studios of Townsend Duryea and Robert Hall.
Freeman, London-born and educated at Bayswater Grammar, was inspired by a “apparatus for photography” gift from his father in 1857. Freeman, at 19, arrived in Adelaide with his father and stepmother on the Countess of Fife in 1860. Almost straight away, he set up a photographic studio in Hindley Street, Adelaide city, with another young photographic hopeful Edward Belcher. Their partnership continued, on and off, at 97 Hindley Street from 1861 (with Freeman was sole proprietor from 1864) and opposite Adelaide Town Hall in 1866-67 (Town Hall Photographic Gallery in 1867).
The entrepreneurial Freeman always enthusiastically experimented with the latest processes and techniques, In 1864, some “chemical experiments” caused an explosion and fire in the cellar of the Hindley Street premises shared with Belcher. Freeman was knocked unconscious and injured his face and hands. The next year, the South Australian Register described Freeman’s “two portraits of the same gentleman, one sitting without his hat and looking upward, and the other standing” as “ingenious”. In 1874, the South Australian Advertiser applauded Freeman’s “triple portrait, showing the face of the emperor of Prussia, the late emperor of the French, and Prince Bismarck, all in one bust.”
From the 1870s, Freeman called his business (in Rundle Street until 1882, King William Street 1883-84) the Melbourne Photographic Company – linked to a firm operating in the Victorian gold-mining town of Heathcote in 1865 when a young man had posed in rags and tatters for images to touch the heart (and pocket) of an uncle at home in England.
By 1874, Freeman was sole South Australian agent for the Art Union of Victoria and he published an album of Adelaide views with Edward James Wivell, thought to be partner of H.J. Johnstone at Melbourne in 1857. During the 1870s, Freeman was probably Adelaide’s leading fine arts entrepreneur. In 1873, he presented a “dissolving view and oxyhydrogen light” show of uplifting scenes from Illustrations from the Life of Christ, The Bottle and The Drunkard’s Children and The Pilgrim’s Progress.
Freeman successfully exhibited British and colonial paintings and photographs at Adelaide Town Hall in 1874 and opened a special picture gallery with gis Melbourne Photographic Company’s studio that exhibited paintings won by South Australian subscribers to the Victorian Art Union. The press reported every novelty by Freeman who experimented with luminous paint (photographs glowing in the dark), glass transparencies (small for magic lanterns, large for windows), coloured sunsets and moonrises and instantaneous action photographs using dry plates, assisted by flash powder. In 1879, he debunked the craze for “spirit” photographs by showed how these could be faked.
Freeman took several views of Adelaide in 1875 for the South Australian commissioners for the 1876 Philadelphia centennial exhibition. Two were city panoramas: the first, from the top of The Advertiser building, the second, from Montefiore Hill. By 1877, he had a new 22×18 inch camera that took views winning a bronze medal at the Paris universal exhibition in 1878 and third prize at the Sydney International in 1879.
Freeman married artist Mary Sarah Goodhart in 1876. Three years later, he lost many negatives in a fire in his studio. Freeman moved his business to New South Wales in 1884 and worked at Newcastle in 1884. He returned to Adelaide by 1892, where he set up a camera obscura entertainment at Glenelg Beach. He died in Adelaide in 1895.