Publisher: Melbourne: The Atlas Press.
Format: Softcover octavo, letterpress wrappers with process screen portrait laid-down, ribbon and staple bound, x + 17 plates, 24 x 19.3cm.
Text continues “By special appointment to their Excellence Lord Brassey & Earl Beauchamp. Melbourne: 119 Swanston St. Sydney: 374 George St.” Includes several advertisements printed in colour or two-tone colour, including one for The Austral Cycle Agency by Blamire Young.
A selection of portraits of leading actors and actresses of the day, including Maud Jeffries, Mrs Brown Potter, Dorothy Vane, Hilda Spong, Maxine Elliott, Julius Knight, Wilson Barrett, and others. The Referee called it a “collection of the choicest specimens of the photographic art gleaned from the thousands of celebrities photographed by this noted firm…The souvenir is indeed worthy of the reputation of a firm famous for the excellence and thoroughness of its work.” Ref: The Referee, 28.3.1900. Held in NLA.
Talma & Co. studios was established by photographer Andrew Barrie (1859–1937) and Henry Weedon (1859–1921) in Melbourne in 1892. “Talma & Co was the first commercial photography studio in Australia to use electric light, being fitted out with a ‘6000 candle power lamp’ that reduced exposure times to two seconds and ‘by which the most perfect photographs [could] be taken at night’.” Ref: NPG.
Chips, creases and tears to cover and prelim pages, ribbon decaying.
