The Beattie’s Studio Catalogue Background

John Watt Beattie (1856-1930) was a Tasmanian photographer who operated a business called “Beattie’s Studio” from 1892. That business also incorporated material from previous photographers dating back to c1849. Beattie operated a museum of physical objects, mostly related to Port Arthur. The complete story is available on the web site;

https://www.beattiesstudio.com/history-of-beatties-studio

Upon his death in 1930, the business was operated by his cousin, Jack Cato, and then Frank Cane and was purchased by the Stephenson family in 1934. It has remained in the family ever since. I am John Stephenson and I’m the third generation of our family to own Beattie’s Studio.

Prior to his death, Beattie’s Port Arthur Museum was sold to the Queen Victoria Museum (QVM) in Launceston. Further items were later sold to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG). There was a fire in the Murray Street premises of Beattie’s Studio in 1933 and some photographic material was lost. Jack Cato (Beattie’s cousin) wrote that “everything was destroyed save a few singed prints” which is untrue. Considerable material survives.

There are two shipping containers full of items from Beattie’s Studio. These items include cameras, lenses, darkroom equipment, manufacturing equipment, lighting, signs, display racks, original photographs produced prior to 1993, approximately 330 framed photographs produced c2000-2018, approximately 10,000 historic negatives dated c1849-1970 (with the bulk being 1870-1930) and some books.

None of these items have been catalogued or indexed in any way, with the exception of approximately 5000 negatives that have been digitised and catalogued in Adobe Lightroom and published on www.BeattiesStudio.com

The Beattie’s Studio portrait photographs have been donated to the Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Odice (TAHO). These consist of weddings, studio photographs, passports, and events such as Miss Tasmania. There are approximately 100,000 of these and they are indexed in books called the register. These no longer form part of the Beattie’s Studio Collection as described herein.

I have been digitising the historic negatives since 2013, with the bulk of the work done 2013-2018. Since then, progress has been slowed by family matters and shifting priorities. It started with the death of AA Stephenson (my father) and I don’t want it to end when my time comes. I feel the need to contribute to Beattie’s legacy as every generation of my family has done since 1934, but someone else can finish this. I think I’m done. I’m not sure I have the physical dexterity/health to carry on with the digitising.

There are thousands left to do, let alone the prints, slides, films and personal (family) material.

On a more positive note, I have specified the project and figured out what needs to happen next. There’s a dedicated audience for Beattie’s material and the video series (Forgotten Tasmania www.YouTube.com/forgottentasmania ) that I have produced has gained significant attention. The Beattie’s web site continues to gain tradic as well as sell digital downloads. The retail outlets (Winnings Newsagency and Sorell Antiques) are selling a modest amount of framed prints and there is the occasional income from licencing of Beattie’s images.

To say the collection is forgotten would be untrue. To continue, it needs a better home than the containers and some way for the public to enjoy it.

I suppose I have a pipe dream of someone like David Walsh (MONA) swooping in and buying the collection, but frankly I’d settle for TMAG if I thought they would ever display more than one or two pieces. QVM has Beattie’s Port Arthur Museum. I have photos of the museum before they acquired it. There are hundreds of objects. I’ve never seen more than a handful in Launceston. I presume the rest is in storage. This collection is already in storage, I want something better for it.

Project Overview

What I’ve been calling “the metadata project” has become the Beattie’s Studio Catalogue, a multimedia database of photos, metadata, locations, history, cameras, artefacts, historical objects, photographic tools, and products. All goes into a database. Maybe e-Hive? That’s what Trove uses.

To create the database, I need to;

1. Photograph and catalogue the physical items in the containers; cameras, darkroom, enlargers etc.

2. Systematise the Beattie’s digitising process. Re-start the digitising and document the process thoroughly.

3. Connect the LR catalogue to the database. It would be nice if that was bi- directional, but maybe not possible? Maybe the end step in the LR part of the process is to publish a TIFF to a filesystem and import a thumbnail with metadata to the database?

I should hire someone, but I need to document the process so I can train them. Systematise it first by making a training course. I should have an assistant/apprentice that I can work out the process with to create the process documentation. It might play to my skills to make a video course (e.g. Skillshare, Brilliant, Udemy etc) about how the Beattie’s catalogue process works. Include Lightroom, metadata, history and feed it into the database.

I need to bring in apprentices, but where can I find people that might be interested? Publish a course. The alfa tester person that I explain everything to can help me do some, might even turn into an apprentice. Whatever happens, if the course gets published or not, there will be a record of how to do this and someone can carry on. The data will be in a museum friendly format that TAHO or TMAG can easily use. The physical objects (cameras etc) will be photographed and catalogued. The collection will be a collection rather than a container full of possibilities. It could be sold or passed on or published or used as a museum. This cataloguing is really the very first step. I can’t know what to do with the collection until I catalogue it, so I know what I have.