“The Embarkation Photographer”

Australian troops on board HMAT Ajana are farewelled as they depart for war, Port Melbourne, 8 July 1916. The departure was one of many captured by Josiah Barnes, a Melbourne-based photographer who made a living from his images of 69 embarkations.
Barnes’s letterhead referred to himself as “the Embarkation Photographer”, and his photographs were widely circulated and regularly published in newspapers. With his cumbersome camera, glass-plate holders, and heavy black “light cape”, Barnes managed to move in and out of the enormous crowds that gathered on Port Melbourne’s pier for the departure of each troopship. He produced group portraits of the men and women departing, records of the crowds that gathered on the pier, and evocative images of loaded vessels being towed to sea.