Ship launching ceremony

June 29th, 2012 by Kathy Hackett

This great action shot, depicting the ‘decisive’ moment that the champagne bottle breaks against the side of a ship was captured by Tom Lennon some time between 1932 and 1947. Nothing is known of either the ship or the woman who performed the christening with such enthusiasm. That spectacular explosion of champagne looks almost too good to be true but the negative of this image has not been altered.

Tom T. Lennon was a commercial photographer whose studio was at 64 Victoria Road, Drummoyne. The 1796 negatives in the Powerhouse Museum Tom Lennon archive include images of balls and dinners held in Sydney, weddings, funerals, work events, parties, portraits, pets, fashion, horse races, musicians, dance bands and various places and events 1927-1949. Many images from the Tom Lennon archive have been posted previously on Photo of the Day.

Post by Kathy Hackett, Photo Librarian

Photography by Tom Lennon

No known copyright restrictions

Tags: ceremonies, launches, ships, women

The Powerhouse Museum's Photo of the Day blog features a new image each day, chosen from the Powerhouse Photo Library.

The majority of these images have been taken by Museum photographers for a variety of purposes such as for exhibitions, of objects in our collection, events, behind-the-scenes and location shots. We also feature many images taken by our Flickr community and from our visitors. We hope you enjoy the photographs and stories.

The licensing of each image varies however we are trying to release as many as possible under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.1 license.