William Hammer opened his photographic studio in Rundle Street in 1882. The business was to become one of the city's best known, taking photographs of generations of Adelaide's citizens in its rooms at 6a Rundle Street - later Rundle Mall. Most South Australian family albums contain portraits taken by Hammer and Co. William Hammer died in 1919, but the business continued for another 65 years, until 1984.
Similarly, although not as long-lived as Hammer, Stump and Fruhling were also prominent photographic businesses in the late nineteenth century.
Stump and Co. opened their studio on the corner of King William and Hindley Streets in 1887. (South Australian register, 28 May, p. 3) In 1889, claiming to be 'the largest photographic firm in the city', they opened a second studio in Rundle Street. (South Australian Register, 15 June 1889, p. 6) Founder Alfred Stump died in 1925, and in 1929 the firm moved to Birks Buildings, Gawler Place. It closed in about 1933. In 1893 the Fritz Portrait Company opened (also in Rundle Street) under the management of Eddie Hutchison. The following year they became Fruhling and Co. The business seems to have closed in 1927. The advent of cheap cameras, together with the effects of the Great Depression, saw the closure of many photographic studios.
While these 'cabinet' prints are of unidentified people, they provide interesting information about the style of dress during the mid 1890s. Using trick photography the photographers at Hammer & Co. present a woman's head and shoulders mounted on a stone plinth.
