Who was Townsend Duryea?
Townsend Duryea was born in Long Island, New York in 1823. He was trained as a mining engineer, then took up photography. He left the United States for Melbourne in 1852 and three years later moved to Adelaide where he soon became the colony’s leading photographer. When Queen Victoria’s son Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh visited Adelaide in 1867, he chose Duryea to be his official photographer. Duryea’s studio was on the corner of Grenfell and King William Streets. In 1875 a spectacular fire destroyed both the studio and Duryea’s entire collection of 50,000 glass plate negatives. He gave up professional photography and moved to the Riverina in NSW, where he farmed until he died in 1888.
