Tasmanian Aboriginal women, 'Bessy Clarke' and 'Patty,' in 1866, (enlarged copies by J. W. Beattie of Hobart, Australia), c. 1895.
Albumen silver prints
Charles Woolley’s photographs were made for public display at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition in Australia. At precisely this time, Darwin was thinking about the imminent disappearance of such Tasmanian and Australian Aboriginal people as a result of contact with 'superior races.' Re-circulated later in the century by J. W. Beattie, Woolley’s pictures came to be seen as documents of this process of extinction. They could be found in many anthropological collections across the world, the full-face and profile views lending themselves to scientific analysis.
Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.
