North Shore, Sydney Harbour and Fort Macquarie - Damaged Neg

Giant Glass Plate Negatives of Sydney Harbour.

North Shore, Sydney Harbour and Fort Macquarie, from collodion glass plate negative, 160 x 96.5 cm (5.1 ft x 3.08 ft), State Library of New South Wales, XR 46 (the image above was pieced together from the broken negative in 2016.)

These three Giant Glass Plate Negatives of Sydney Harbour (measuring 1.35 x 0.94 metres, 53” x 37”) – understood to be the world’s largest 19th century wet-process negatives, documenting the future site of the world heritage-listed Sydney Opera House. Bernhardt Holtermann and Charles Bayliss pushed the boundaries of 19th century photographic technology to new limits by devising a method for creating images bigger than had been ever thought possible, and toured them across the globe. This technological achievement allowed better global diffusion of the photographic medium throughout the 19th century.