MADELEINE SAY Thomas Hannay, photographer in 19th-century western Victoria

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Thomas Hannay - Travelling Photographer - In the Colony of Victoria 1858-1859

An incredible collection of photography capturing many varied facets of life in Western Victoria, by Thomas Hannay, a photographer who travelled the region with his camera and horse-drawn film laboratory from 1858-1859. Includes photographs of Victoria's first permanent European settlements just 25 years after it was founded, and images of the Cart Gunditj of the Gunditjmara.

General Information

  • ISBN : 9780645002805
  • Publisher : Vern McCallum Collection
  • Product Type : books

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thomas hannay travelling photographer

In the eyes of others: Visiting a distant past captured in a covered wagon

The Age

Thomas Hannay set off on a horse-drawn covered wagon to photograph Victoria in the 1850s. One picture he took tells its own powerful story.

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Oceania

A gateway to the history and archives of science, technology and innovation in Australia

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Journal article, eoas id: bib/asbs09306.htm.

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Published by the Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology. This Edition: 2024 February (Kooyang - Gariwerd calendar) Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#kooyang For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/bib/ASBS09306.htm

"... the rengitj , as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260

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thomas hannay travelling photographer

Photo quest for new home

Avid photo collector vern mccallum is anxious to secure the future preservation of his anthology. journalist jenny mclaren finds out about his expansive collection..

HUGE RANGE OF IMAGES: Portland man Vern McCallum has collected over 18,000 historical photos. Some date back to 1859. Picture: Rob Gunstone

Three pairs of dark, soulful eyes peer out, ever watchful, from a large sepia photograph.

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Vern McCallum swears they follow him as he goes about his daily work of keeping history alive.

thomas hannay travelling photographer

The three Mount Clay Aboriginal tribesmen are seated shoulder-to-shoulder, ill-at-ease in baggy clothing, their faces daubed with white paint, two clutching boomerangs, the other a woomera.

The portrait was captured in 1859 by travelling photographer Thomas Hannay, just 25 years after the Hentys came ashore in Portland and only a few decades after the advent of photography.

The image is among precious few surviving of indigenous tribes of the era. Of the thousands of historic photos he has amassed half a century, it is also one of Mr McCallum’s favourites. 

For this avid collector, it embodies the very reason that drives his passion.

“These blokes have been homeless for a long time,” he says of the trio.

“We have to make sure that we look after them.

“It (the collection) is our history and it has to be preserved, no matter what.

“It is not something you can afford to lose. It belongs to the general public and it is important that we preserve it.”

Keen to share this unique visual record of the region’s history, Mr McCallum has brought his vast collection out of storage from where it usually resides in a spare room and under his house, for an exhibition at the Castle d’Art Gallery at Allestree on Portland’s eastern approaches.

Of the 19,500 photos that currently make up the Vern McCallum Photo Collection, 1000 are on display as prints – those deemed worthy like the Mount Clay image in metre-wide proportions – the remainder catalogued in thumbnail prints or stored on computer.

They depict the life and times of the Western District and its residents, from Hannay’s 1859 images to almost present-day, from Warrnambool through to Portland and Mt Gambier, and inland from Hamilton to Horsham and most communities in between. 

There are images of early homesteads and their occupants, streetscapes, shops and places of worship, people at work and at play, indigenous communities and natural landmarks.

For the most part, they have been sourced from private collections, retrieved from boxes under beds and in dusty cupboards. Some have come in the form of slides, negatives and even early glass negatives.

Mr McCallum traces his “hobby that got out of hand” back 50 years, when as a young bloke, he was given a small postcard-sized photo taken in Digby about 1890 featuring his great-grandfather Donald McCallum’s wheelwright shop, where, he also happened to build coffins. Keen to view the shop in more detail, Mr McCallum was advised to learn photography.

Under the tutelage of Merino photographer Stan Hayes, a darkroom was set up in the family’s pantry to teach the then young shearer-cum-truckie the fine art of developing photos. 

Hooked on the process of being able to blow up a photo and zoom in on the fine details, it was after Mr McCallum’s involvement in compiling the photo display for the 1977 Merino-Digby ‘back to’ that things really took off.

“People just came from everywhere wanting to give me photos,” he recalls. In the days before scanners, he would take a picture of the photos with his 35mm camera and then develop them in the darkroom.

It was the acquisition of the prized Thomas Hannay collection that he regards as the highlight of his career. 

“It was a bit like getting the Mona Lisa dropped on you,” he says, recalling the day he was presented with Hannay’s 105 photos, each glued to a page of an A4 exercise book.

They had been in the care of Portland historian Joe Wiltshire, but when Mr Wiltshire died, his widow offered them to a grateful Mr McCallum.

A Melbourne photographer, Hannay left a rich photographic legacy as he snapped his way through the fledgling settlements of the Western District in 1859, among his work the rare series of early Aboriginal photos.

“They are like gold dust. They are absolutely priceless. These are pictures you will never find again and we need help to preserve them,” Mr McCallum enthuses. 

After scanning and copying the Hannay collection, Mr McCallum donated the originals to the State Library but retained the rights for five years to protect them from unauthorised use. Curiously, the Vern McCallum Photo Collection contains no original photos. All are copies from the originals lent by their owners and then returned. It’s a practice Mr McCallum says has allowed him access to far more images than possible had he limited the collection to originals.

 “I don’t want the originals. I’d sooner make copies and give back the originals,” he says. “That way I get access to a lot more photos. Sometimes people give them to me if they, or no one else in the family wants them.”

As the self-appointed custodian of such a valuable historical record, it’s a responsibility that weighs heavily on Mr McCallum’s shoulders. At 71, he is anxious to secure the future preservation of the collection.

“It’s absolutely unique ...  it’s something you won’t see anywhere else. It’s a living, breathing thing and it’s still growing all the time,” Mr McCallum says. “To lose this sort of stuff would be absolutely criminal.”

Mr McCallum has approached both the Glenelg Shire Council and the State Library for support in helping to preserve the photos.

In conjunction with a number of like-minded supporters, he is planning to establish an incorporated body to facilitate government grant applications to help fund and maintain the collection. To date, he has funded the collection from his own pocket.

Not that he’s counting. “It’s priceless. Really, how could you put a price on something like this?”

He also sees plenty of opportunities for using the collection for the community’s benefit, including growing the tourist dollar.

“Tourist information centres here are already digitised, so the photos could be on computer for visitors to sit and look through. People doing family history research would travel to do that because they’re dead keen on it,” Mr McCallum says.

He hopes a future listing of the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape as a UNESCO World Heritage site could also present an opportunity for a permanent home for the collection.

Mr McCallum envisages schools using the collection as a teaching tool for students’ research skills to caption the photos.

Glenelg Shire Council said it had declined an offer to auspice the collection in August following a strategic plan submitted by Mr McCallum because it did not have adequate resources. However, it said it had been working closely with Mr McCallum to find suitable options to share the collection with a broader audience and would continue to support him to find options. The collection is on display at the Castle d’Art Gallery until the end of January.

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Faculty of Sciences, Engineering and Technology

Palaeontologist identifies ‘mystery photographer’ of the Naracoorte Caves

Scientists have emphasised the importance of historical writing in caves, after proving the identity of the first person to photograph Australian caves more than 150 years ago.

The 1860 photographs of Blanche Cave at Naracoorte are the first Australian photographs to feature a cave. They are also some of the first photographs in the world to show a cave entrance.

News - First picture of a cave by Thomas Hannay

Blanche Cave, 1860, second roof window entrance. Julian Tenison-Woods seated above cave. Photographer: Thomas Hannay. State Library of South Australia, B36858.

The identity of the photographer was unknown until recent years, when palaeontologist Dr Liz Reed from the School of Physical Sciences discovered an engraving in a Melbourne periodical that cited Thomas Hannay of Maldon as the producer of the photograph.

Despite that discovery, there was still no physical evidence linking the itinerant photographer to the caves.

However, in May 2018, Dr Reed discovered an inscription on the wall of Blanche Cave that can be attributed to Thomas Hannay. The signature is adjacent to the area shown in the 1860 photographs and provides evidence of his visit to the caves.

News - Naracoorte Caves photographer Thomas Hannay

The Thomas Hannay inscription on the cave wall in Blanche Cave (above) and an outline of the inscription (below). Scale bars are 10 cm.

Discovery emphasises the importance of historical writing in caves

Dr Reed’s findings published in the journal Helictite emphasised the importance of historical writing in caves.

“Historical writing in caves serves as primary evidence for historians and should be considered important cultural heritage,” Dr Reed and co-author Steven Bourne wrote in the paper.

“We suggest graffiti removal is largely inappropriate in soft limestones such as at Naracoorte as the conservation benefits of leaving surfaces intact outweigh the aesthetic reasons for removal.

“If cave cleaning is to be conducted it should be done only after thorough documentation of the area and justification for restoration is considered.”

Naracoorte Caves National Park in South Australia is a UNESCO World Heritage site renowned for its Quaternary vertebrate fossil record spanning the past 500,000 years.

Further reading

  • New evidence confirms Thomas Hannay as the first photographer of Naracoorte Caves and emphasises the importance of historical writing in caves , Helictite
  • Who was the ‘mystery photographer’ of the Naracoorte Caves? , Naracoorte Herald
  • Previous page
  • 3. Panorama, 1861

This 1861 image is the earliest known photographic panorama of Maldon. It depicts the rapidly-growing fledgling town some eight years after the discovery of gold in the area. Several of the buildings pictured remain extant thus assisting the viewer to orient themselves and understand the changes made over the years. Like the later panorama, this photograph provides a snapshot of the commercial areas of town and was used to promote the prosperity and development of Maldon to the wider world.

The following notes have been compiled by Derek Reid, Peter Cuffley and David Oldfield on behalf of Maldon Museum & Archives Association.

thomas hannay travelling photographer

Thomas Hannay, and his father Charles, had arrived in Port Philip in November 1852 on the Ann Dashwood . Thomas was recorded as being 19 years old and his father Charles as 47 years on arrival, with their occupations given as farmers. In September 1857 an advertisement appeared in the Kyneton Observer :

G. Hannay begs to inform the inhabitants of Kyneton that he is now prepared to TAKE PORTRAITS by the Collodion Process at MELBOURNE PRICES … Orders taken for Views in the Country.

Thomas Hannay announced his purchase of Thomson and Crawford, booksellers and stationers in Main Street in the Tarrangower Times in April 1860.

The State Library of Victoria contains a collection of over 100 historical photographs credited to Thomas Hannay dating from the late 1850s of scenes of European settlement in western Victoria.

thomas hannay travelling photographer

The 1861 camera position was to the north of the 1867 position, and both are on the east side of town behind the main streets.

Each plate is shown separately below.

thomas hannay travelling photographer

The left-hand plate stretches along High Street from Warnock Bros. Beehive Store (built in 1858) to the Carriers Arms Hotel (1857).

thomas hannay travelling photographer

The central plate runs from the Bank of Victoria (1858) at the intersection of High and Main Streets to McMillan & Padley, ironmongers (1859) in Main Street. The pavement of Fountain Street can be seen in the right background along with the empty allotment where the Wesleyan Church would be built in 1863.

thomas hannay travelling photographer

The right-hand plate shows the Market Hall (1859) in the left background, before the portico was added (1865), with Wright Ross & Co (1859) and C.M. Fuller, hairdresser (1859) in Main Street. The Electric Telegraph Office (1859) on High Street is in the right-hand background.

Why was this photographic panorama produced?

It appears likely that the photograph was produced for the Victorian Exhibition of 1861 which was held in Melbourne from 1 October to 29 November 1861.

A clue lies in the Tarrangower Times of 8 October 1861 which included notes of the proceedings of the Maldon Municipal Council for 3 October 1861 where, under correspondence received, was the item:

From the Exhibition Commissioners, reminding the Council that most other municipalities had presented photographic views of the scenery, buildings etc., in their districts, and asking that the Maldon Council would do likewise.

In the Tarrangower Times of 18 October 1861 it was reported that:

The Exhibition.  The sub-committee appointed to arrange for photographic views of the leading features of the district reported that it had succeeded in getting eleven views for £5.

The Tarrangower Times of 22 October 1861 carried the news:

The eleven views of the leading features in the district intended for the Exhibition have been taken “excellent well” by Mr. Hannay, they include Trinity Church, Presbyterian Church, with the ruins of ancient schoolhouse at the back, the new Court House, the Market House, Maldon from Victoria reef, etc.

We believe that this 1861 panorama is the same as the view of “ Maldon from Victoria reef ” referred to above.

thomas hannay travelling photographer

Image: The Exhibition Building 1861 Source: State Library of Victoria Accession No. H130, Image b36186, Cox & Luckin Collection.

The Victorian Exhibition of 1861 was held in the Exhibition Building on the corner of La Trobe and William Streets, Melbourne.

This exhibition was organised to collect together articles of produce and manufacture, and provide details of the resources and physical characteristics of colonial Victoria, so worthy items could be selected for display at the London International Exhibition the following year.

The Catalogue of the 1861 exhibition opens a window upon the Colony of Victoria in that year.

Maldon was noted as a principal inland town. According to the census of April 1861 the population of Maldon at that time was 3,334 which can be compared to that of Ballarat at 22,111, Sandhurst (which became Bendigo) at 12,995 and Castlemaine at 9,664. In Maldon there were 920 European alluvial miners, 600 European quartz miners, 450 Chinese alluvial miners and no Chinese quartz miners.

Five steam engines with an aggregate of 80 horsepower were employed in winding, pumping etc. The total value of gold exports from Victoria for 1860 was £8,626,642 at a value of £4 per ounce.

The value of wool exports from Victoria in 1860 was £2,025,066.

The cost of living in 1861, for a family consisting of a man and his wife and three children was estimated as two pounds, seven shillings and four pence per week. This included 28 pounds of bread, 2 pounds of beef or mutton, 21 pounds of potatoes, 5 pounds of flour, one pound of tea, 6 pounds of sugar, 3 pounds of soap, 2 pounds of candles, 7 pints of milk and 2 pounds of butter.

A farm labourer was paid 15 shillings a week, with rations, an artisan, such as a mason, was paid 14 shillings a day, without rations.

In 1860 in Victoria there were 22,854 births, 4,351 marriages and 12,361 deaths.

There were 100 miles of Government Railway in Victoria   with another 182 miles in the course of construction and 21 miles of railway had been opened by private companies. 1,504 miles of electric telegraph had been established in Victoria and connections had been completed with Adelaide, Hobart and Sydney.

Maldon Museum & Archives Association’s photograph collection includes a digital copy of this photographic panorama. Ownership of the photograph is privately held. The owner has generously granted the Association access to a digital copy for study purposes and to add a key piece to Maldon’s historic record.

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  • Maldon District History
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  • 4. Panorama, 1867
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thomas hannay travelling photographer

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The ‘mystery photographer’ of the naracoorte caves uncovered by dr liz reeves.

--> Posted on January 21, 2019 by Annemarie Gaskin

thomas hannay travelling photographer

In 1860 a series of three photographs were taken of the entrances to Blanche Cave. Two of the photographs feature the Reverend Julian Tenison-Woods.

Tenison-Woods commissioned the photographs, so they could be used to produce engravings for his book ‘ Geological Observations in South Australia ’, which was published in 1862. The engravings were made by Alexander Burkitt.

The Reverend Julian Tenison-Woods was the first to report the presence of fossil bones at Naracoorte Caves after he visited Blanche Cave in 1857. He published an account in the Register in 1858 and expanded on his interpretation of the caves in his 1862 book.

The identity of the photographer of the 1860 images was unknown for over 150 years.

In 2016, Dr Liz Reed from the University of Adelaide discovered that the identity of the unknown photographer was Mr. Thomas Hannay of Maldon. This was revealed after she found a previously unrecorded engraving of Blanche Cave that attributed the photograph to Mr Hannay.

Mr Hannay was an itinerant photographer who captured images across Western Victoria, and was particularly active in Portland.

The 1860 photographs of Blanche Cave are the first Australian photographs to feature a cave. They are also some of the first photographs in the world to show a cave entrance.

Despite the discovery of Thomas Hannay as the first photographer of Naracoorte Caves, there was still no physical evidence linking him to the caves.

thomas hannay travelling photographer

An engraved signature was recognised by Dr Reed in Blanche Cave last year and it reads ‘T. Hannay Photographer’. The signature is adjacent to the area shown in the 1860 photographs and proves that Hannay visited the caves.

In the past, many visitors to the caves signed their names on the walls of Blanche Cave and others. Some of these signatures are historically significant and while unsightly, should be preserved as they can be yield important information about key people and events associated with the caves.

Visitors to the caves can see the signature on a tour of Blanche Cave and hear about the story from Naracoorte Caves staff.

Original Story from The Naracoorte Herald .

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The Moscow Metro Museum of Art: 10 Must-See Stations

There are few times one can claim having been on the subway all afternoon and loving it, but the Moscow Metro provides just that opportunity.  While many cities boast famous public transport systems—New York’s subway, London’s underground, San Salvador’s chicken buses—few warrant hours of exploration.  Moscow is different: Take one ride on the Metro, and you’ll find out that this network of railways can be so much more than point A to B drudgery.

The Metro began operating in 1935 with just thirteen stations, covering less than seven miles, but it has since grown into the world’s third busiest transit system ( Tokyo is first ), spanning about 200 miles and offering over 180 stops along the way.  The construction of the Metro began under Joseph Stalin’s command, and being one of the USSR’s most ambitious building projects, the iron-fisted leader instructed designers to create a place full of svet (radiance) and svetloe budushchee (a radiant future), a palace for the people and a tribute to the Mother nation.

Consequently, the Metro is among the most memorable attractions in Moscow.  The stations provide a unique collection of public art, comparable to anything the city’s galleries have to offer and providing a sense of the Soviet era, which is absent from the State National History Museum.  Even better, touring the Metro delivers palpable, experiential moments, which many of us don’t get standing in front of painting or a case of coins.

Though tours are available , discovering the Moscow Metro on your own provides a much more comprehensive, truer experience, something much less sterile than following a guide.  What better place is there to see the “real” Moscow than on mass transit: A few hours will expose you to characters and caricatures you’ll be hard-pressed to find dining near the Bolshoi Theater.  You become part of the attraction, hear it in the screech of the train, feel it as hurried commuters brush by: The Metro sucks you beneath the city and churns you into the mix.

With the recommendations of our born-and-bred Muscovite students, my wife Emma and I have just taken a self-guided tour of what some locals consider the top ten stations of the Moscow Metro. What most satisfied me about our Metro tour was the sense of adventure .  I loved following our route on the maps of the wagon walls as we circled the city, plotting out the course to the subsequent stops; having the weird sensation of being underground for nearly four hours; and discovering the next cavern of treasures, playing Indiana Jones for the afternoon, piecing together fragments of Russia’s mysterious history.  It’s the ultimate interactive museum.

Top Ten Stations (In order of appearance)

Kievskaya station.

thomas hannay travelling photographer

Kievskaya Station went public in March of 1937, the rails between it and Park Kultury Station being the first to cross the Moscow River.  Kievskaya is full of mosaics depicting aristocratic scenes of Russian life, with great cameo appearances by Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.  Each work has a Cyrillic title/explanation etched in the marble beneath it; however, if your Russian is rusty, you can just appreciate seeing familiar revolutionary dates like 1905 ( the Russian Revolution ) and 1917 ( the October Revolution ).

Mayakovskaya Station

Mayakovskaya Station ranks in my top three most notable Metro stations. Mayakovskaya just feels right, done Art Deco but no sense of gaudiness or pretention.  The arches are adorned with rounded chrome piping and create feeling of being in a jukebox, but the roof’s expansive mosaics of the sky are the real showstopper.  Subjects cleverly range from looking up at a high jumper, workers atop a building, spires of Orthodox cathedrals, to nimble aircraft humming by, a fleet of prop planes spelling out CCCP in the bluest of skies.

Novoslobodskaya Station

thomas hannay travelling photographer

Novoslobodskaya is the Metro’s unique stained glass station.  Each column has its own distinctive panels of colorful glass, most of them with a floral theme, some of them capturing the odd sailor, musician, artist, gardener, or stenographer in action.  The glass is framed in Art Deco metalwork, and there is the lovely aspect of discovering panels in the less frequented haunches of the hall (on the trackside, between the incoming staircases).  Novosblod is, I’ve been told, the favorite amongst out-of-town visitors.

Komsomolskaya Station

Komsomolskaya Station is one of palatial grandeur.  It seems both magnificent and obligatory, like the presidential palace of a colonial city.  The yellow ceiling has leafy, white concrete garland and a series of golden military mosaics accenting the tile mosaics of glorified Russian life.  Switching lines here, the hallway has an Alice-in-Wonderland feel, impossibly long with decorative tile walls, culminating in a very old station left in a remarkable state of disrepair, offering a really tangible glimpse behind the palace walls.

Dostoevskaya Station

thomas hannay travelling photographer

Dostoevskaya is a tribute to the late, great hero of Russian literature .  The station at first glance seems bare and unimpressive, a stark marble platform without a whiff of reassembled chips of tile.  However, two columns have eerie stone inlay collages of scenes from Dostoevsky’s work, including The Idiot , The Brothers Karamazov , and Crime and Punishment.   Then, standing at the center of the platform, the marble creates a kaleidoscope of reflections.  At the entrance, there is a large, inlay portrait of the author.

Chkalovskaya Station

Chkalovskaya does space Art Deco style (yet again).  Chrome borders all.  Passageways with curvy overhangs create the illusion of walking through the belly of a chic, new-age spacecraft.  There are two (kos)mosaics, one at each end, with planetary subjects.  Transferring here brings you above ground, where some rather elaborate metalwork is on display.  By name similarity only, I’d expected Komsolskaya Station to deliver some kosmonaut décor; instead, it was Chkalovskaya that took us up to the space station.

Elektrozavodskaya Station

thomas hannay travelling photographer

Elektrozavodskaya is full of marble reliefs of workers, men and women, laboring through the different stages of industry.  The superhuman figures are round with muscles, Hollywood fit, and seemingly undeterred by each Herculean task they respectively perform.  The station is chocked with brass, from hammer and sickle light fixtures to beautiful, angular framework up the innards of the columns.  The station’s art pieces are less clever or extravagant than others, but identifying the different stages of industry is entertaining.

Baumanskaya Statio

Baumanskaya Station is the only stop that wasn’t suggested by the students.  Pulling in, the network of statues was just too enticing: Out of half-circle depressions in the platform’s columns, the USSR’s proud and powerful labor force again flaunts its success.  Pilots, blacksmiths, politicians, and artists have all congregated, posing amongst more Art Deco framing.  At the far end, a massive Soviet flag dons the face of Lenin and banners for ’05, ’17, and ‘45.  Standing in front of the flag, you can play with the echoing roof.

Ploshchad Revolutsii Station

thomas hannay travelling photographer

Novokuznetskaya Station

Novokuznetskaya Station finishes off this tour, more or less, where it started: beautiful mosaics.  This station recalls the skyward-facing pieces from Mayakovskaya (Station #2), only with a little larger pictures in a more cramped, very trafficked area.  Due to a line of street lamps in the center of the platform, it has the atmosphere of a bustling market.  The more inventive sky scenes include a man on a ladder, women picking fruit, and a tank-dozer being craned in.  The station’s also has a handsome black-and-white stone mural.

Here is a map and a brief description of our route:

Start at (1)Kievskaya on the “ring line” (look for the squares at the bottom of the platform signs to help you navigate—the ring line is #5, brown line) and go north to Belorusskaya, make a quick switch to the Dark Green/#2 line, and go south one stop to (2)Mayakovskaya.  Backtrack to the ring line—Brown/#5—and continue north, getting off at (3)Novosblodskaya and (4)Komsolskaya.  At Komsolskaya Station, transfer to the Red/#1 line, go south for two stops to Chistye Prudy, and get on the Light Green/#10 line going north.  Take a look at (5)Dostoevskaya Station on the northern segment of Light Green/#10 line then change directions and head south to (6)Chkalovskaya, which offers a transfer to the Dark Blue/#3 line, going west, away from the city center.  Have a look (7)Elektroskaya Station before backtracking into the center of Moscow, stopping off at (8)Baumskaya, getting off the Dark Blue/#3 line at (9)Ploschad Revolyutsii.  Change to the Dark Green/#2 line and go south one stop to see (10)Novokuznetskaya Station.

Check out our new Moscow Indie Travel Guide , book a flight to Moscow and read 10 Bars with Views Worth Blowing the Budget For

Jonathon Engels, formerly a patron saint of misadventure, has been stumbling his way across cultural borders since 2005 and is currently volunteering in the mountains outside of Antigua, Guatemala.  For more of his work, visit his website and blog .

thomas hannay travelling photographer

Photo credits:   SergeyRod , all others courtesy of the author and may not be used without permission

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Guide, Driver and Photographer Arthur Lookyanov

My name's Arthur Lookyanov, I'm a private tour guide, personal driver and photographer in Moscow, Russia. I work in my business and run my website Moscow-Driver.com from 2002. Read more about me and my services , check out testimonials of my former business and travel clients from all over the World, hit me up on Twitter or other social websites. I hope that you will like my photos as well.

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  • Date: June 3, 2012 06:12:00 am EDT
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  • Tags: Russia , Moscow Metro , Komsomolskaya , Moscow Highlights , escalators , Moscow Famous Landmarks , underground palace , Moscow

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Going Deeper Underground: Photographer Alexey Fokin on the Moscow Metro

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Moscow’s metro system is mainly known as being one of the most beautiful in the world, but photographer and actor-in-training Alexey Fokin (1995) is more interested in the gritty, human side of it. Born and raised in Russia’s hectic capital, he knows the city inside-out, and loves to go underground to capture the diverse faces of this metropolis.

Whereas most sane people would try to avoid the chaotic rush hour in the subway, Alexey enjoys getting up early, taking his camera, and capturing Muscovites making their way to work. “People are rude, everybody wants to sit down, and you’ll see faces looking like they want to kill somebody. And themselves,” he laughs, “but then suddenly, there’s a smile.” Preferring the busy stations in the city centre which connect two or more of the 14 lines, he walks through the tunnels, rides the escalators, and boards the trains – looking for scenes worth shooting.

It is hard to imagine that Alexey only took up photography two years ago. But his shots effortlessly show what life inside one of the world’s busiest metro systems is like. They display everything you expect, and more. The lovers, the cleaner, the babushka, the businessman, the tourist, the youngster, the beggar, the child. They tell you their stories with their eyes, their newspapers, their pets, their musical instruments, their flowers, their groceries, their phones, their clothes. Some with the stunning architectural backdrop of the famous stations, others in sober and at first sight unnoteworthy settings.

He likes to think of the Moscow subway as an underground metropolis in itself, as “another city with other rules”. Even though he considers it to be different from its actual streets, this subsurface universe reflects the many different faces of the capital: “Maybe poor, maybe homeless, maybe with money: all of them in one place, where they are just looking for each other, sometimes confused. So many lines of love you can find there.”

With over 200 stations and countless kilometres of underground streets, Alexey notices that people behave in ways they wouldn’t above ground. You can find people – and animals – who actually live in Moscow’s parallel world. They are smoking on the trains, drinking, getting very intimate, feeling like ‘normal’ behavioural codes do not apply to life underneath the surface.

As he is currently in his last year of acting school, Alexey is busy every day from early in the morning until late at night. But his free time is inseparable from his camera, and his intention is to make a collected photo essay about life in different metros worldwide.

Until then, he continues to show how the metro is quintessentially part of Moscow culture. He believes that everyone in Moscow has a metro story, and he does a damn good job in telling several of them through his captivating work.

thomas hannay travelling photographer

©AlexeyFokin @fokinman

IMAGES

  1. MADELEINE SAY Thomas Hannay, photographer in 19th-century western Victoria

    thomas hannay travelling photographer

  2. MADELEINE SAY Thomas Hannay, photographer in 19th-century western Victoria

    thomas hannay travelling photographer

  3. Thomas Hannay

    thomas hannay travelling photographer

  4. Blanche Cave, 1860, photographer Thomas Hannay. Julian Tenison-Woods

    thomas hannay travelling photographer

  5. MADELEINE SAY Thomas Hannay, photographer in 19th-century western Victoria

    thomas hannay travelling photographer

  6. "The Mosquito Plains Caves. From a photograph by Thomas Hannay

    thomas hannay travelling photographer

VIDEO

  1. Thomas’s Photographer Esk Valley Camphill Community 8yrs

  2. Thomas the travelling tank engine trailer

COMMENTS

  1. In the eyes of others: Visiting a distant past captured in a ...

    Thomas Hannay, Travelling Photographer in the Colony of Victoria 1858-59 ([email protected]), was launched last week by Tony Wright. Get the day's breaking news, entertainment ideas ...

  2. PDF Thomas Hannay, photographer in 19th-century western Victoria

    Travelling photographers. There are many contemporary newspaper reports documenting Charles and Thomas Hannay's lives in the Victorian goldfields township of Maldon after . 1860. When Charles died, in 1883, the . Bendigo Advertiser. noted his passing, describing him as 'a resident of Maldon for nearly 25 years' and 'father of Mr

  3. State Library Victoria

    This advertisement is one of the few surviving documentary records of Thomas Hannay (1835-1897), an immigrant from Scotland who tried his hand as an itinerant photographer in the new colony of Victoria. But his most important survival is a collection of over 90 photographs which he made while travelling around the Western District in the late ...

  4. MADELEINE SAY Thomas Hannay, photographer in 19th-century western Victoria

    Thomas Hannay, photographer in 19th-century western Victoria 65 Bridge at Woorawyrite (detail), albumen silver photographic print mounted on cardboard, c. 1859, photograph by Thomas Hannay, Pictures Collection, H2013.345/86 account recorded discord in the crew and the stresses and strains inevitable in a floating community of nearly 400 passengers and crew.3 Poor management of the Ann Dashwood ...

  5. New evidence confirms Thomas Hannay as the first photographer of

    Photographer: Thomas Hannay. State Library of South Australia, B36860. Hannay: Narracorte photographer ... man is Alexander Burkitt as he was known to travel . with W oods during the preparation ...

  6. PDF THE MYSTERY PHOTOGRAPHER AND THE UNKNOWN ENGRAVING: NEW ...

    travelling photographer. Around 1880, Captain Sweet produced two images of Blanche Cave, likely made using the dry-plate ... The photographer known as Thomas Hannay was particularly

  7. Thomas Hannay

    An incredible collection of photography capturing many varied facets of life in Western Victoria, by Thomas Hannay, a photographer who travelled the region with his camera and horse-drawn film laboratory from 1858-1859. Includes photographs of Victoria's first permanent European settlements just 25 years after it was founded, and images of the Cart Gunditj of the Gunditjmara.

  8. Adelaide Research & Scholarship: New evidence confirms Thomas Hannay as

    New evidence confirms Thomas Hannay as the first photographer of Naracoorte Caves and emphasises the importance of historical writing in caves: Author: Reed, E. Bourne, S. Citation: ... In May 2018, we discovered an inscription on the wall of Blanche Cave that can be attributed to Thomas Hannay, providing evidence of the photographer's visit ...

  9. Ground News

    Thomas Hannay set off on a horse-drawn covered wagon to photograph Victoria in the 1850s. One picture he took tells its own powerful story. Get access to our best features. Get Started. Enable Notifications Browser Extension Show Grayscale Images. Tuesday, November 14, 2023 Set Location. US Edition. Home.

  10. Journal Article

    New evidence confirms Thomas Hannay as the first photographer of Naracoorte Caves and emphasises the importance of historic writing in caves In Helictite Imprint vol. 44, 2018, pp. 45-58. EOAS ID: bib/ASBS09306.htm . Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is

  11. Photo quest for new home

    The portrait was captured in 1859 by travelling photographer Thomas Hannay, just 25 years after the Hentys came ashore in Portland and only a few decades after the advent of photography.

  12. Palaeontologist identifies 'mystery photographer' of the Naracoorte

    The identity of the photographer was unknown until recent years, when palaeontologist Dr Liz Reed from the School of Physical Sciences discovered an engraving in a Melbourne periodical that cited Thomas Hannay of Maldon as the producer of the photograph.. Despite that discovery, there was still no physical evidence linking the itinerant photographer to the caves.

  13. PDF Helictite New evidence confirms Thomas Hannay as the first photographer

    Photographer: Thomas Hannay. State Library of South Australia, B36858. Reed Bourne. ... man is Alexander Burkitt as he was known to travel with Woods during the preparation of the book. ...

  14. (PDF) The mystery photographer and the unknown engraving: new

    travelling photographer. Around 1880, Captain Sweet produced . ... Blanche Cave, 1860, photographer Thomas Hannay. Julian Tenison-Woods figured (State Library of South Australia, B36858).

  15. 3. Panorama, 1861

    About the photographer: Thomas Hannay, and his father Charles, had arrived in Port Philip in November 1852 on the Ann Dashwood. Thomas was recorded as being 19 years old and his father Charles as 47 years on arrival, with their occupations given as farmers. In September 1857 an advertisement appeared in the Kyneton Observer:

  16. The 'mystery photographer' of the Naracoorte Caves uncovered by Dr Liz

    Despite the discovery of Thomas Hannay as the first photographer of Naracoorte Caves, there was still no physical evidence linking him to the caves. ... An engraved signature was recognised by Dr Reed in Blanche Cave last year and it reads 'T. Hannay Photographer'. The signature is adjacent to the area shown in the 1860 photographs and ...

  17. From the Thomas Hannay collection

    From the Thomas Hannay collection - The Rising Sun Hotel at Hotspur c1859. The publican at the time was John McConachy. Photographer: Thomas Hannay Image courtesy of the State Library of Victoria...

  18. The Moscow Metro Museum of Art: 10 Must-See Stations

    Have a look (7)Elektroskaya Station before backtracking into the center of Moscow, stopping off at (8)Baumskaya, getting off the Dark Blue/#3 line at (9)Ploschad Revolyutsii. Change to the Dark Green/#2 line and go south one stop to see (10)Novokuznetskaya Station. Check out our new Moscow Indie Travel Guide, book a flight to Moscow and read 10 ...

  19. Blanche Cave, 1860, photographer Thomas Hannay. Julian Tenison-Woods

    Download scientific diagram | Blanche Cave, 1860, photographer Thomas Hannay. Julian Tenison-Woods figured (State Library of South Australia, B36858). from publication: The mystery photographer ...

  20. Moscow Metro

    My name's Arthur Lookyanov, I'm a private tour guide, personal driver and photographer in Moscow, Russia. I work in my business and run my website Moscow-Driver.com from 2002. Read more about me and my services , check out testimonials of my former business and travel clients from all over the World, hit me up on Twitter or other social websites.

  21. Adelaide Research & Scholarship: New evidence confirms Thomas Hannay as

    The identity of the photographer was unknown until recently, when we discovered an engraving in a Melbourne periodical that cited Thomas Hannay of Maldon as the producer of the photo. Despite this breakthrough, there was no direct evidence linking Hannay to Naracoorte Caves. In May 2018, we discovered an inscription on the wall of Blanche Cave ...

  22. Going Deeper Underground: Photographer Alexey Fokin on the Moscow Metro

    Moscow's metro system is mainly known as being one of the most beautiful in the world, but photographer and actor-in-training Alexey Fokin (1995) is more interested in the gritty, human side of it. Born and raised in Russia's hectic capital, he knows the city inside-out, and loves to go underground to capture the diverse faces of this metropolis.