Including Revised 1960s Alphabetical Directory of South African based Photographers & Studios (1846 to 1915) - Click here to download.
Shortly after the invention of photography, the camera was briefly referred to as a “Mirror with Memory”, whilst the resulting photographic image was initially referred to as a photogenic drawing.
1) Introduction
During the early 1960s, Doctor Arthur David Bensusan published the first and only record to date of South African based photographers between the period 1846 and 1900.
An updated version of this list has not been published for the past 57 years! Bensusan’ s 1963 list has been reproduced on ancestors.co.za, but sadly his work has not been acknowledged.
The author has made it his personal task over the past 25 years in updating the original Bensusan directory of photographers. In doing so, the vast Hardijzer Photographic Research Collection was established.
Other photograph collections that were established along similar lines by South African photo historians are the Killy Campbell (today housed at the Killy Campbell museum), Reverent Hopkins (today housed at the Cape Archives) and Bensusan (today housed at Museum Africa in Johannesburg) collections, but to mention a few.
Simonstown – Inscription on image states: “Secretary Brown in his dog-cart plus Photographic Saloon – 1876”. The large window of this corrugated iron building was put...
