Snowman from Snowy Mountains photo scrapbook

December 6th, 2012 by Lynne McNairn

This photo is another page from a personal scrapbook compiled by Miss Dorothy Palmer of her weekend rail and coach trip to see the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme in 1959.

This particular photograph appears to be an ‘enlargement’ and unlike other pictures in this scrapbook fills the entire page. It shows five women in their woolen overcoats, headscarves and gloves posing with a small snowman (or as Dorothy observes snowman/cat/dog). The ground has only patchy snow cover and you can see the dirt where the women have worked to scrape their creation together.

In 1959, ‘enlargement’ photographs would have been obtained by taking the selected photographic negative back to the chemist (who sent them away to the laboratory). Special orders such as enlargements took longer to be processed than normal negatives and Dorothy probably waited about two weeks for this one to be returned. This is the only enlarged photograph in this scrapbook. It is likely that Dorothy ordered multiple copies and gave them to all her friends in the photograph. Very different to the ease of sharing photos in the digital age.

Post by Lynne McNairn

Photography: Dorothy Palmer, 1959
© All rights reserved

Tags: black and white, scrapbooks, Snowy Mountains Australia, Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, tourism

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.