This timeline was produced for the exhibition The photograph and Australia (Art Gallery of NSW, 21 March – 8 June 2015). It presents key moments in the history of the photographic medium and of Australia since the colonial period.

1770
Captain James Cook of the Endeavour lands at Botany Bay, an area inhabited by the Eora people, having viewed the transit of Venus and in search of the ‘Great South Land’

1779
Joseph Banks, botanist on Cook’s 1770 voyage, recommends Botany Bay to an English parliamentary committee as a suitable site for a penal settlement

1788
The First Fleet arrives at Botany Bay, bearing 543 convict men and 189 convict women

1789
A smallpox epidemic kills nearly half of the Aboriginal population around the Sydney settlement

1802
In England, Thomas Wedgwood uses light-sensitive chemicals to capture silhouette images on paper

1803
The settlement of Van Diemen’s Land (modern-day Tasmania) begins

1805
‘Australia’ (suggested by the explorer Matthew Flinders) becomes a widely used name for the southern continent

1807
The camera lucida is invented by William Hyde Wollaston in England

1824
A penal colony is established at a site on Redcliffe Peninsula and in 1825 moved to the Brisbane River, site of modern-day Brisbane

1825
Tasmania is declared a separate colony from New South Wales

1826
In France, Joseph Niépce produces the earliest fixed images using a camera

1829
The Swan River colony is established by the British in modern-day Perth

1839
Daguerre’s process is presented to the public in Paris and patented to restrict commercial use Fox Talbot’s photogenic drawing technique is published in England

Tasmania’s Cornwall Chronicle publishes news of the photogenic techniques of Fox Talbot and Dr Andrew Fyfe

Convict transportation from Britain to Brisbane ceases

1840
In England, Fox Talbot develops the calotype process

1841
Captain Augustin Lucas produces the first daguerreotype in Australia in a demonstration on Bridge Street, Sydney

English photographer Robert Hunt publishes the first treatise on photographic methods

1842
Australia’s first professional photographer, George Goodman, opens a daguerreotype portrait studio on George Street, Sydney

The Illustrated London News, one of the world’s earliest illustrated periodicals, is first published

1843
First elections for Legislative Council in New South Wales are held

1847
Douglas Kilburn makes daguerreotypes of Kulin people, which are engraved and published in England in 1850

1848
The Australasian Anti-Transportation League, the first popular national movement, is established

1849
Convict transportation from Britain to Port Phillip (in present-day Victoria) ceases

1850
The German photographers William and Thekla Hetzer introduce the calotype process to Sydney

In France, LD Blanquart-Evrard invents the albumen photograph

Convict transportation from Britain to New South Wales ceases

1851
Six nations (Canada, America, France, Russia, Germany, Britain) exhibit photography at the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in London

Britons Frederick Scott Archer and Peter Wickens create the ambrotype using the wet-plate collodion process

In response to popular demand, the British government separates the colonies of Queensland and Victoria from New South Wales

Gold is struck in Bathurst, New South Wales, and Ballarat, Port Phillip District

1852
The Illustrated Sydney News becomes Australia’s first illustrated newspaper

1853
Frenchman Adolphe Martin invents the tintype

Douglas Kilburn demonstrates the stereoscopic process in Hobart

Convict transportation from Britain to Tasmania ceases

1854
French photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri creates the first carte de visite

Exhibitions of works to be sent to the Universelle Exposition de Paris 1855 are held in Sydney, Hobart and Melbourne, creating an early showcase for photography

The ambrotype is introduced to Australia by James Freeman

Polish naturalist and artist William Blandowski leads an expedition to northwest Victoria, the earliest known Australian scientific expedition to include photography

The Eureka Stockade is erected by goldminers at Ballarat

The wet-plate process reaches Australia

1855
Australian photographers exhibit at the Universelle Exposition de Paris 1855

French photographer Taupenot develops the dry-plate or collodio-albumen process

The portable stereoscopic camera arrives in Australia

John Sharp and Frederick Frith take the first paper panorama using the wet-plate process in Australia, a five-part view of Hobart nearly one metre long

Due in large part to the gold rush, the Chinese population in Australia reaches 50 000

1856
Male landowners and tenants over 21 years are granted the right to vote in the self-governing territory of South Australia, followed by Victoria (1857), New South Wales (1858) and Tasmania (1896). Britain retains control over foreign affairs and defence

1857
In Sydney, the Freeman Brothers are the first to adopt the English practice of publishing mosaic group portraits of distinguished citizens

1858
The tintype process reaches Australia under the name ‘melainotype’

Fothergill’s process, an early dry-plate process, is introduced to Australia

1859
William Blackwood introduces the carte de visite to Sydney

John Walter Osborne invents the world’s first commercially viable photolithographic process while working as a photographer in the Department of Crown Lands and Survey of Victoria Charles Darwin’s On the origin of species is published

1860
The Lambing Flat riots, a series of anti-Chinese demonstrations in the Burrangong region of New South Wales, drive 1000 Chinese miners off the fields

Solar photographic enlargers are marketed in Australia from the 1860s

1861
The colony of South Australia grants propertied women the right to vote in local elections, and in parliamentary elections in 1894. Western Australia follows suit in 1899

1867
Victorian government photographer RLJ Ellery begins photographing the Moon

1868
Convict transportation to Western Australia from Britain ends, ceasing all convict transportation to Australian colonies

A team of Aboriginal cricket players tours England

1869
An Act for the ‘Protection and Management of Aboriginal Natives’ is passed by the parliament of Victoria

1870
The first Aboriginal children are enrolled in public schools in New South Wales

1871
Richard Leach Maddox pioneers gelatin emulsion in Britain, paving the way for the gelatin negative

1872
The first Amateur Photographic Society of New South Wales is formed

Photographs of the Moon are taken with the Great Melbourne Telescope and sent to Britain

Mugshots are made the standard photographic format for recording criminals and suspects in New
South Wales police departments

1875
BO Holtermann commissions from Charles Bayliss the largest ever wet-plate panorama, each of the negatives measuring 90 x 160 cm

1880
The gelatin dry-plate process is introduced to Australia, and the first commercially produced plates are manufactured and sold by Philip J Marchant in Adelaide

The bushranging Kelly gang is captured at Glenrowan, Victoria

1883
The first photographs of the Orion Nebula from the southern hemisphere are taken by Joseph Turner using the Great Melbourne Telescope

1884
Henrietta Dugdale forms the first Australian women’s suffrage society in Melbourne

1885
The first transparent negative roll is introduced by the Eastman company in the United States as an alternative to fragile glass plates

1888
The first Kodak camera, capable of taking 100 photographs before being returned to the manufacturer for processing, makes photography accessible to millions of amateurs

1890
HC Russell takes the first photographs of the Milky Way in Australia using the Star Camera at the Sydney Observatory

1893
Glossy gelatin-silver paper reaches Australia

1894
Andrew Barrie’s Talma studios in Melbourne are the first to use electric lighting

1896
One-guinea Pocket Kodak cameras are available in Australia. Over 3000 are sold within two months

1899
Crown Studios in Sydney introduces colour photography to Australia with the three-exposure Joly and Ives process

Three-minute automatic photo booths are established in Sydney

1900
The Kodak Brownie, the first mass-marketed camera, is released

The New South Wales Department of Public Works undertakes a photographic record of The Rocks area in Sydney after an outbreak of bubonic plague

1901
The British self-governing colonies of Tasmania, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia are federated into a single nation, forming the Commonwealth of Australia

The Immigration Restriction Act privileges British and other ‘white’ migration to Australia, commencing the White Australia Policy

1902
The Commonwealth Franchise Act grants voting and standing rights to women in Australian federal elections

1905
Picture postcards achieve popularity, combining photography, printing and postage

1907
Autochrome process, invented by Louis Lumière in France in 1904, is introduced to Australia

1908
Melbourne company Baker & Rouse merges with Kodak to form Australia Kodak Limited, which opens a manufacturing plant in Abbotsford, New South Wales

1909
Harold Cazneaux’s solo exhibition at the New South Wales Photographic Society’s Sydney rooms marks the growing acceptance of photographers as artists

1911
The Australian Commonwealth appoints JP Campbell as its first official cinematographer Frank Hurley is appointed official photographer to Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition

1914
World War I begins

1916
Harold Cazneaux, Cecil Bostock and James Stening form the Sydney Camera Circle, advocating a national photographic aesthetic utilising local sunshine

1917
Frank Hurley is appointed Australia’s first official war photographer for the Australian Imperial Force during World War I

1918
World War I ends

1921
The Western Australian Edith Cowan is the first woman to be elected to any Australian parliament. In 1943 Dame Enid Lyons and Senator Dorothy Tangney are the first women to be elected to federal parliament

1934
Associated Press starts its wire photo service in the United States

The illustrated Walkabout magazine begins publication in Australia

1935
Art in Australia publishes Max Dupain’s images informed by the functionalist aesthetic of the New Photography movement, signalling the beginning of modernist photography in Australia

1937
Kodachrome 35mm roll film becomes available in Australia

1938
Pix magazine, the first Australian weekly to employ North American–style presentation and photojournalism, is launched in Sydney

The Contemporary Camera Groupe is formed by Max Dupain

The Australian Aborigines Advancement League stages a day of mourning to mark the sesquicentenary of the arrival of the First Fleet

1939
World War II begins

1940
Damien Parer, Australia’s first combat cameraman, travels to Palestine with the Australian Imperial Force

Photographer Frank Hurley documents the Australian Imperial Force in Palestine

1942
Photographer Max Dupain enlists in the Camouflage Unit, Department of Home Security

1945
World War II ends

1946
Australian Geoffrey Powell publishes Photography: a social weapon, arguing photographers have a responsibility to draw attention to social realities

1947
The Institute of Photographic Illustrators, aimed at raising the standard of photography, is formed in Sydney

In the United States, Edwin Land invents the Polaroid camera

The Cold War begins

1948
The 35mm Nikon camera is introduced in Japan

1949
The White Australia policy is relaxed by the Menzies government, starting the gradual abolition of racially motivated immigration policies

1952
The Melbourne Argus is the first daily newspaper in the world to publish colour photographs

1955
Jack Cato’s The story of the camera in Australia is published in Melbourne

Frank Hurley’s Australia: a camera study is published in Sydney

1956
In the United States, Xerox introduces the first office photocopier

The Second Indo-China War (known in Australia as the Vietnam War) begins

1957
The United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) launches Sputnik I and II, the first satellites

1959
The exhibition Family of man, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), tours Australia, and includes the work of Australian photographers David Moore and Laurence Le Guay

1961
The Great Melbourne Telescope is rebuilt at Mount Stromlo Observatory near Canberra, with a 1.25-metre glass mirror and new controls

1963
Kodak makes the first Instamatic cameras and colour Polaroids are introduced

Mervyn Bishop begins a cadetship at the Sydney Morning Herald, later becoming Australia’s first Indigenous press photographer

1964
Push-button telephones and the Picturephone service come into use

1966
Soviet spacecraft Luna 9 lands on the Moon, as does the United States’ spacecraft Surveyor I which transmits more than 11 000 television images of the terrain

1967
Australia’s first satellite WRESAT 1 is launched from Woomera Rocket Range in South Australia

A federal referendum removes discriminatory references to Indigenous people from the Australian Constitution

1968
The Earth is photographed from the Moon

1969
Pictures of the Apollo XI crew’s Moon walk are relayed to the world by the Parkes radio telescope

1971
Neville Bonner becomes the first Indigenous parliamentarian

1972
The National Gallery of Victoria opens the first curatorial photography department in an Australian art museum

1973
The Australian Centre for Photography opens in Sydney and engages John Szarkowski, director of photography at MoMA, New York, to participate in a nationwide tour

A USSR space-probe lands on Mars, and the United States’ Mariner transmits detailed pictures of Venus and Mercury

1975
Steven Sasson at Eastman Kodak develops the first digital camera using an image sensor

The Fall of Saigon ends the Vietnam War

1976
The Aboriginal Land Rights Act allows for the return of Commonwealth lands to traditional owners

1977
Japan launches a geostationary satellite to provide cloud-cover pictures of Australia to the Bureau of Meteorology

Light vision: Australia’s international photography magazine is founded in Melbourne

1981
Photodiscourse: critical thought and practice in photography, edited by Kurt Brereton, is published by Sydney College of the Arts

1982
Sony demonstrates Mavica, the first commercial camera with electronic picture-storage rather than film

1983
Peter Dombrovski’s photograph Rock Island bend is used as a campaign image for conservation groups protesting against the damming of the Franklin and Gordon rivers in Tasmania

Photofile magazine is launched by the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney

1986
NADOC ’86 Exhibition of Aboriginal and Islander Photographers, the first exhibition by Indigenous photographers, is shown at Aboriginal Artists Gallery, Sydney

1987
Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative Gallery is established by Brenda L Croft, Tracey Moffatt and Michael Riley to promote urban Aboriginal art

1988
The Bicentenary of the arrival of the First Fleet is celebrated in Australia, spurring massive protests and the largest ever demonstrations for land rights

Gael Newton’s Shades of light: photography and Australia 1839–1988 and Anne-Marie Willis’s Picturing Australia: a history of photography are published

1989
The first portable digital camera, the Fuji DS–X, is commercially marketed in Japan

1991
Dissolution of the USSR and the end of the Cold War

1992
The Great Melbourne Telescope is rebuilt for the MACHO project, a search for the evidence of dark matter

1993
Michael Aird’s Portraits of our elders is published in South Brisbane

Wayne Ludbey’s photograph of Aboriginal footballer Nicky Winmar’s historic protest against racial taunts is published in the Age

The Native Title Act is founded to facilitate the recognition and protection of traditional land ownership

1994
The internet moves out of universities and into commercial use

1999
Australians vote ‘no’ in a referendum on whether Australia should become a republic

2000
The world’s first camera phone, the J-Phone, is released in Japan

The development of new Photoshop software techniques leads to the rise of the internet meme

2001
The federal government refuses to allow the Norwegian freighter Tampa, carrying rescued asylum seekers, into Australian waters

2002
Allegations supposedly proven in 2001 by widely circulated photographs that asylum seekers rescued by the Tampa had thrown children overboard to ensure passage to Australia, are dismissed

2004
Social networking sites Facebook and Flickr emerge with image-database functions

Kodak Australia closes its manufacturing plant in Melbourne

2007
Apple releases the first generation iPhone

Google Street View is launched, providing panoramic images of cities in the United States taken using nine directional cameras at a height of around three metres

2008
Photographs of Australian cities are added to Google Street View

2010
The photo-sharing application Instagram is launched and attracts over a million users within its first six months

2011
Google Inc engineers the reverse image search, which allows internet users to trace the origin of and information about photographs used for advertising and other purposes

Snapchat, a photo-messaging application, is developed by Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy, students at Stanford University

2013
Over 300 million photographs are uploaded to Facebook every day, more than 20 times the total number of analogue photographs held by the United States’ Library of Congress

‘Selfie’ is included in the online version of the Oxford English dictionary

2014
Google Glass, a wearable computer with a head-mounted optical display, goes on sale