Keast Burke collection

fonds

1928 - 1972

Textual Records, Graphic Materials

449081

Eric Keast Burke (1896-1974), photographer, journalist and historian, was born at Christchurch, New Zealand. He was educated at Sydney Church of England Grammar School and graduated Bachelor of Economics from the University of Sydney in 1922. During World War I he had served with the 1st Australian Wireless Signal Squadron, Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force. He edited the unit history With Horse and Morse in Mesopotamia, published in 1927. Burke served as associate-editor of APR and took over as editor on his father's retirement in 1946. He promoted the publication of historical research on Australian photography and the documentary value of photographs. His lasting legacy is his involvement in the discovery, in 1951, and the permament preservation of a unique collection of nearly 3,500 glass negatives featuring the mining towns of Hill End and Gulgong, N.S.W., in the 1870s. The photographs were commissioned by gold miner Bernard Otto Holtermann, and taken by the photographers Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss. The Holtermann Estate presented this collection to the Mitchell Library in 1952. Burke's extensive researches, with the assistance of his wife, Iris, on the Holtermann Collection over the next two decades culminated in the publication of Gold and Silver (1973). Burke was Photographic Consultant to the National Library of Australia from 1964 to 1974.

This collection contains research notes, correspondence and photographs concerning the Holtermann collection and related research about Hill End and Gulgong. It also includes papers relating to photography in Australia.

This collection comprises 2 record series. You may navigate to a more detailed description of each series from this collection record.