Lorna Anderson on Harrison's Photographic Studio

 

In 1941, I was a student at the Perth Technical College which was situated in St Georges Terrace.  I was enrolled in a commercial art course which was a new course just being introduced.  But these were the war years and the shops didn't have a great deal of stock to sell so advertising was not really that extensive.  So jobs for commercial artists were few and far between.  The boys in the class could go into sign-writing but girls were not permitted to climb ladders at that time.  So the avenues for a job were not very good in this department and my parents were keen that I did go out and get a job.  So I took a night class at Tec, the Technical School in the art of photographic colouring.  These were the years before the invention of colour photography but photography as we know it today and in my consideration this was a wonderful invention, colour photography.  And it saved such a lot of work.  

 

After I had finished the course, I got a job with a photographic studio called Harrison's which was situated in Murray Street on the top floor of the Grand Picture Theatre.  It was about three blocks down from New South Wales Bank which was on the corner of Barrack Street and Murray Street.  Now there was a boarding house in between the bank and the theatre, next door to us I think.  Our studio was on the north side of Murray Street.  When I was interviewed for the job I was told that I would come under the Factory Workers Union and my pay was to be fourteen shillings and sixpence a week.  I was a sixteen-year-old girl and this was in 1942.  The studio was run and owned by a gentleman called Reg Harrison who was one of Perth's characters.  In looks he resembled Groucho Marx, the film personality.  He had a long nose and wore horn-rimmed glasses and had a black Hitler-style moustache.  He was in his late fifties, I should say because he had a grownup son but I never knew of any wife.  He was very clever with his photography; he had a dream of being the first person to patent colour photography.  He spent a lot of his time and money on his experiments but they didn't come to anything. The camera which he used in his studio was a large affair on a tripod.  It was draped in a black cloth under which he would put his head to get the focus right and then he'd urge the sitter to watch the birdie then he'd pull a string.  There was an artificial birdie on top of them which always amused us.  He took a very good portrait in my opinion.  He took his photos quite quickly, never wasted any time as he told us he had other pressing matters to deal with down town.  We never did find out what they were.  Above his studio was quite large and could accommodate a large wedding group with no trouble.  The dark room was at the back; the area for retouching and colouring was light and suitable.  It had plenty of nice windows that we could sit near.  

 

Even though I had learnt to colour the photographs, I wasn't given the job straight away, oh no.  I had to learn all the pre-colouring activities first.  We learnt first to retouch the negatives, take out all the wrinkles, smooth over the blemishes and whiten gold teeth which photographed black.  We did all this with a very fine lead pencil.  Black and white photos then had to be treated with chemicals to turn them into sepia colour if they were to be coloured.  All the newly printed photos were washed in running water for half an hour to remove all the chemicals.  There were four or five girls working in the different jobs.  Removing the chemicals was to stop prints from fading.  Anyhow there were four or five girls working in different jobs, including the receptionist.  There was also a hot press where we mounted the finished photos.  It wasn't so bad in the dark room; it would have been boring but for the fact that the sound from the film downstairs could be heard quite clearly in the dark room.  The sound could have come up through the wooden floor boards, I'm not quite sure but we knew all the love scenes by heart in the pictures that were being shown downstairs and could relate them word perfect.  It wasn't until years later that I went to a drive-in theatre and saw one of these films and I knew everything that was going to happen.  

 

Our day started at nine o'clock and finished at six o'clock and we didn't ever wear a uniform.  These were the days of the six o'clock closing for the hotels so I was urged by my family to get straight onto the twenty-two tram that went down Barrack Street and get home to North Perth without delay.  

 

We were kept very busy because of the Perth families who were in a hurry to have portraits made of their loved ones before they were sent overseas.  This is all very natural in a war-time situation.  Also we had dozens of Yankee sailors who were on shore leave from submarine duties.  This was very sad because a lot of them never came back to Perth again to collect their photos, even though they were quite sure that more shore leave would see them back.  I don't know where they got the information from but it never happened.  I think it was the Battle of Coral Sea and these photos just stayed in the pigeon-holes as far as I can see, forever.  We were never told of what was going on in the war.

 

I eventually graduated to colouring the photos, at last.  We used oil paint at Harrison's.  The wedding groups were difficult because the bridesmaid's dresses had to be the perfect colour.  We often had to ask for a patch of the material to get it right.  I had learnt to colour with dyes as well when I was going to Tec but we only used those on snapshots that we took ourselves, sometimes on the weekend.  And the prices at Harrison's were reasonable.  A seven and a half inch by five and a half inch was a very popular size so that price was about three pounds I'd say.

 

When I said before that Harrison was one of Perth's characters, he loved to meet people and would bring back to the studio a great collection of different people, soldiers, sailors, pilots, families he met just sometimes at the markets, the fruit markets.  I don't know where he went to.  He considered us girls as his family and would show-off to all who came back with him.  We would make them cups of tea and demonstrate what work we were doing.  

 

I can remember when peace was declared, August 1945, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan and how the atmosphere in the town started changing on that night.  People were getting noisy and thrown into the streets.  I could feel that something was happening and I didn't want to be around so I caught the tram and got home fast.  

 

I stayed at Harrison's for three and a half years; then I went to another photographic studio called Lafayette and Dease [81 Barrack Street, P.O. Directories 1949, Photographers] which was in Barrack Street a few blocks up from the pub on the corner of Murray Street and I just can't remember the name of that pub.  I worked upstairs at Dease's, out on the open balcony, colouring photographs.  Here the studio used a different colouring technique to what I was used to but I soon caught on.  They used water colour paint which was sprayed on by a pumped-up spray gun.  I'm not sure that that studio may still be operating under the name of Dease but I haven't been to Perth for a long time.  

 

I'm not sure what happened to Harrison's or how long his studio lasted.  As I got married to a school teacher who was sent to the country teaching and we travelled from school to school until 1966 when we came to Bunbury.  I have often wondered what happened to all the wonderful negatives that Harrison had in that studio. There were hundreds of them and they were so good.

 

Lorna Anderson interviewed by the Bunbury Oral History Group, 2003

OH 200319 | City of Perth Cultural Collections