A photo provides the viewer with far more than a static, two-dimensional image. A photo captures a time and a place, an attitude and a memory. We are able to question or confirm our understanding of ‘place’ through the vision that has been captured and printed by those who have come before us. The diversity of the TMAG photograph collection complements the objects held within the museum and brings out another layer of stories.

These images are a statement and a record of the social history of Tasmania – the people, the architecture, the environment, the transport… and those significant events that are etched in our minds, whether we were here for them or not.

The TMAG Photographic collection dates from 1847 and includes the earliest surviving streetscape Daguerreotype in Australia. "Murray Street 1848" by photographer J W Newland, gives us a glimpse of the past looking down Murray Street to Battery Point and the wharves and shows people and horse drawn cabs in the street, whaling ships at the New Wharf (later Princes Wharf) and the old Gaol.

The two images shown here both herald times of great change and upheaval, but are vastly different in emotion and meaning. An image of the New Wharf in Hobart in1897, showing the Steam Ferry service to Bellerive and Beltana, but still revealing a busy port for sailing ships. And an image from only 20 years later when the era of steam had well and truly arrived and from the same Hobart docks the Tasmanian Quota 1st Australian Division sailed from Hobart on the 20th Oct 1914 into a world conflict of staggering proportions.

What memories, what feelings are evoked from these two images is representative of the story of Tasmania, told through images.