140-year-old images of Sydney Harbour win place in UNESCO's Memory of the World registry

Julie Power

Even today, the size of the glass plate photographic negatives produced by 19th-century gold miner Bernhardt Otto Holtermann in 1875 to capture the beauty of Sydney Harbour defy belief.

Each is the size of a contemporary wide-screen television, yet the plates were made less than 40 years after the invention of photography.  

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Holtermann built this mansion in North Sydney with a tower that was high enough to capture views across Sydney Harbour.  Photo: State Library of NSW

Holtermann​ made his fortune on Hill End's goldfields, where he found the world's largest gold 'nugget', weighing 286 kilograms. It was there that he met two photographers whom he teamed with to design a photographic tower to capture Sydney in all its glory, including the future sites of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. 

Three of these images have been recognised by UNESCO as the world's largest 19th-century wet plate negatives and for the technological achievement they represented at the time.

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The broken 8mm glass plate is made up of 291 identifiable glass fragments, plus additional shards, right down to powder. Photo: State Library NSW

Each is about 8 millimetres thick and a metre high. Two are 1.3 metres in width, with the largest 1.6 metres wide, making even the smaller two larger than any other 19th-century glass plate negatives in existence, said Margot Riley, the State Library of NSW's curator of research and discovery.

When the library first submitted the plates for inclusion in UNESCO's international Memory of the World project for their technological achievement, specialists "didn't believe they could possibly exist", said Ms Riley.  

"They queried the measurements, and said they couldn't possibly be that big," she said. 

After contacting many institutions, Ms Riley is confident that they are the biggest surviving glass plate negatives and images in the world. 

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A team at UTS developed artificial intelligence methods to map the broken areas of the glass plate and align them with the high-resolution image. Photo: State Library NSW

For decades the negatives were among thousands lost. They were found in a Chatswood backyard shed with the rest of Holtermann's collection. 

One of the three now recognised was smashed to pieces in the 1980s, but has now been restored using artificial intelligence mapping techniques. 

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One of the three images was found in pieces and had to be restored.  Photo: Matthew Burgess

For Holtermann​, the photos of Sydney were part of a huge and expensive undertaking to promote migration to Australia and show what was possible, said Ms Riley. 

"He was a migration success story," she said. Holtermann took some of the plates on tour, and his entries in photographic expositions won a bronze prize in Philadelphia in 1876, and then silver in Paris in 1878.

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Holtermann's three giant images of Sydney Harbour from 1875 capture the harbour at the time. The glass negative plates, the largest 1.6 metres wide, have been recognised by Unesco.  Photo: State Library NSW

He even took one of the glass plates to Germany but his aim of winning top honours eluded him. 

"He never got gold, but he has now in the photographic hall of fame," said Ms Riley. She said the library was delighted that his achievements, which had slipped from the public's consciousness, would now be remembered and celebrated. 

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Holtermann with the massive nugget he found at Broken Hill.  Photo: State Library NSW

To take the photos, Holtermann built a house at North Sydney – that is now part of Shore School – with a tower big and high enough to capture the views across the Harbour. A room at the top was "designed and built like a large camera on stilts", said Ms Riley.

Even before being lifted to the top where they were put up against the window to capture the image, each of the 30kg plates of glass (used for shop windows usually) had to be imported and special lenses had to be designed.

State Librarian Dr John Vallance says these images represent the best in 19th-century creative photographic technology.

The giant negatives join only five other inscriptions from Australia on the Memory of the World Register.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/140yearold-images-of-sydney-harbour-win-place-in-unescos-memory-of-the-world-registry-20171031-gzbs4u.html