Stump and Hammer the last of the golden 19th Century age of artistic Adelaide photographic studio companies
Firemen attending the blaze, watched by a large crowd, at the photographic studios of Stump & Co. on the King William-Hindley streets north corner in December 1910. The fire caused the Stump & Co. studio to be shut down and its prominent landmark sign to be removed.
Image by John Gazard, courtesy State Library of South Australia
Photographer and businessman Alfred Stump was behind one of Adelaide’s most well-known city’s landmarks in the late 19th Century.
His photographic studio business, Stump & Co., merged with another, Hammer & Co., that survived from 1882 to 1984. Hobart-born Stump had run a photographic studio with R. J. Nicholas in Collins Street, Hobart, before moving to Adelaide as chief operator for Hammer & Co.
By the 1887 Adelaide jubilee exhibition, he’d left Hammer and started Stump & Co. in Gresham Arcade, at what was known as Platts's Corner then Howell's Corner, on the north side of Hindley and King William streets, diagonally opposite the later Beehive Corner. Prominent signs ensured Stump's Corner became a well-known Adelaide landmark and rendezvous. Stump had an advertisement or item about his business in every newspaper almost every week. His photographers were kept busy capturing images of sporting teams and notable personalities, loaned to newspapers for reproduction (suitably attributed) and displayed in shop windows.
A notable employee was John Hood (previously with Townsend Duryea) as photocolorist. Stump & Co. was one of the very few South Australian award winners at the 1888 Melbourne exhibition. Another photographic employee, Ernest P. Howard, made news in a unrelated sphere – as Australia's fastest (220 words per minute) shorthand writer. Several employees left to form their own businesses, such as Wherrett & Co. in Gippsland and John Dunn of the Ideal Studio, Rundle Street, in 1907.
Stump opened a second studio at 65 Rundle Street in 1889 before the King William Street studio was severely damaged by fire in 1894 and again in 1900, causing it to be shut down. Stump was a leading member of the South Australian Photographic Society and occasionally a judge, usually with F.C. Krichauff, A, Krichauff, H.P. Gill and J. Kauffman. In 1908, Stump had some success in producing experimental colored negatives (“autochromes”) and coloured slides.
Around 1911, Stump & Co. joined with Hammer & Co. as Studios Limited at 37a Rundle Street, but both studios continued separately. William Hammer, whose employees had included Mott Cazneaux, father of Adelaide-trained nationally-noted photographer Harold Pierce Cazneaux, saw his photographic studio in Rundle Street in 1882 grow into one of the city's best known, taking photographs of generations of Adelaide citizens at 6a Rundle Street/Mall.
Hammer died in 1919 (followed by Stump in 1925) but the business continued for another 65 years. Stump & Co. moved in 1929 to Birks Pharmacy building, Gawler place, on the Rundle Street corner.
With the advent of roll film plus developing and printing businesses, largely associated with Kodak, and the growing availability of good quality portable cameras, photography passed to amateurs and independent professionals. Studio photography was left to small specialists.