Keith Phillips: 20th century South Australia

Keith Phillips was born in Prospect in May 1898. Educated at Pulteney Grammar and Adelaide High School, Keith made his first pin-hole camera at the age of 12. In 1917 he enlisted in the AIF and served in France.  In 1928 he married Alice Good with whom he had three children; Claire, Christine and Ross. He worked at Adelaide Steamship Company then Romney Studio in the 1930s, before working as a freelance photographer from 1936.

After serving with the RAAF during WWII Keith became official photographer for the University of Adelaide and the Waite Institute, photographing expeditions to the Pearson Islands and Central Australia. He became an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society (1946), and an Artiste of the Federation International del’Art Photographic (1962) and, after retiring from the Waite in 1963, he became Pictorial Editor for Rigby publishers. He produced two books of his photographs The Flinders in Colour, 1968, and Barossa Valley, 1972.
Keith died in Adelaide on 23 April 1973.

A very skilled photographer, with a keen eye for both landscape and seascape, his photographs of trees make you feel as though you could reach out and touch their leaves or peel a piece of bark from their trunks. His photographs of streets, parks, buildings, and people, marvellously evoke a sense of Adelaide time and place.