Landscape Photographer
In the Basin, Nepean, number 409 1880s
albumen print; 14.2 x 19.5 cm
In ‘Charles Bayliss Collection of Photographs of
New South Wales, c. 1876–1897’ nla.pic-vn4218525
In 1876, Bayliss opened his first studio in Sydney where, at various addresses in George Street, he maintained premises until the end of his career, 20 years later. The brass plate outside his studio said ‘Charles Bayliss Landscape Photographer’.
The landscapes he photographed were generally within striking distance of Sydney and increasingly accessible to tourists eager for contact with nature as an antidote to city life. Improvements in transport enabled an ever-expanding number of middle-class Sydneysiders—tourists or ‘excursionists’, as they were often called—to experience natural wonders such as the Three Sisters and the Grose Valley in the Blue Mountains and the Fitzroy Falls in the Southern Highlands, all of which Bayliss photographed.
