Year Of Birth

1824

Year Of Death

1897

Biography

Despite also being a portrait painter, it was as a professional photographer that Olaf William Blackwood received the most acclaim. In 1858 he took 11 imperial size, wet-plate photographs from the top of Government House and combined them to form a large-scale Panorama of Sydney Harbour, the first produced in the colony. It was rapturously received by the Sydney Morning Herald, described as “not merely faultless, but super-excellent … We understand that Mr. Blackwood has fitted up an apparatus with which he can travel to any part of the town or country, and fix his views on the glass upon the spot the instant they have been taken. It is his intention to continue the series of views of the streets and public buildings of Sydney, copies of which can be multiplied to almost any extent. His landscape pieces are achievements of the photographic art, and at once stamp Mr. Blackwood as an artist of considerable merit.”