Martha Robertson (1860-1920)
Martha Randle Burgoyne Robertson was the first female photographer active in Pretoria, before 1896, assisting her husband CF Robertson, a Silver Medallist in the 1878 Paris Exhibition.
Pretoria’s first female photographer, Martha Robertson, was active before 1896, ten years before Sara Buijskes (Buyskes) set up as Johannesburg’s first recorded female photographer. Sara opened her studio in the new Barbican building on Rissik Street in 1931 which she ran with her sister Maud until her death in 1970. Sara started her career as an assistant photographer in the studio of a British born photographer, Robinson Nissen (1866 – 1955), who was based at the Goch studio.
Else (1874 – 1934) and Anna (1880 – 1950) Ginsberg
The sisters opened the only female-run photographic studio in South Africa before 1900 in King William’s Town.
The German Jewish sisters followed their entrepreneurial uncle, Franz, to South Africa in the 1880’s, setting up the Ginsberg’s Art Studio in Downing Street around 1900. Their work includes artistic child portraits against studio backdrops. Their uncle was the mayor between 1903 and 1907and became a Senator in the newly formed Cape Province.
Sara Buyskes worked as a professional photographer from 1906 until her passing in 1970, a span of 64 years.
It was common practice at the time for the widow to continue running her late husband’s studio, as was the case with Mrs Benjamin Kisch in Durban in the late 1880s and 90s and Maria Walters in Cape Town in the 1850s and 60s. Maria Walters was possibly the first female photographer in S.A. taking Daguerrean format photos between 1857 and 1860. B. Kisch was known for high-quality, sometimes hand-coloured portraiture.
By Paula Vellet
