Three young men, resplendent in navy uniforms, faces full of hope, stare into the photographer’s lens.
A champion swimmer poses with his trophy. A woman, clearly dressed for 
a night out, wears her finest stole made from a dead fox. Port Adelaide Football Club officials pose on a wooden bench in front of a weather-worn shelter shed.
They’re stunning, often moving, sometimes humorous glimpses into the not-so-distant past of the people of Port Adelaide and surrounding areas, part of a collection of 2000 glass plate negatives discovered in the 1970s on the premises of what was once Albert Ernest Bond’s St Vincent St photographic studio.
Dating from the early decades of the 20th Century, the images come from a time when portrait photography was generally too expensive for the average working-class family.
Mr Bond’s studio helped change that, bringing portraiture to the masses and capturing striking studies of children, sailors, soldiers, brides, graduates, sporting heroes, dance troupes, and even some nuns.
Now these pictures of the past are being brought into the modern age through a new exhibition titled Mr Bond’s Studio: Port Adelaide Through The Lens.
The exhibition, at the South Australian Maritime Museum, opens on Friday 4 April with a special event called Salty Sessions: Click!
Attendees will be able to dress up in 1930s attire for their own photoshoot, enjoy local food and drink, boogie to tunes from DJ Ruby Chew and get lost in Mr Bond’s wonderful images.
Emma Haddy, Curator, Digital with the History Trust of South Australia, says Mr Bond’s collection was an amazing snapshot of everyday life at the Port.
"You have football clubs, men heading off to war, families, wedding shots," Ms Haddy says.
"It shows everything from changing fashions to the global conflicts that were shaping the community at the time.
"It’s a really beautiful collection, and what makes it more intriguing is the fact that most of them don’t have any names with them."
Ms Haddy says she has two favourite images from the collection – one of a boy holding a dummy, and one of a couple dancing.
"The image of the young boy holding a ventriloquist’s doll probably seems a bit creepy when you first look at it," she says.
"But we managed to trace that back to a man called Cliff Howe, and through working with the Performing Arts Collection at the Festival Centre we were able to find out a bit more about him.
"It turns out that Cliff lived this hugely successful life as a ventriloquist, a comedian, a performer, a cinema owner. All kinds of things.
"And w
e managed to find one of Cliff’s mentees, a man called Lachlan Haig, and Lachlan will actually be at Salty Sessions and he’ll be bringing one of Cliff’s old dolls.
"That’s just one of the lovely stories that came out of these pictures.
"My other favourite is the picture of two dancers, and we don’t know who they are but it’s just such a lovely photograph."
Ms Haddy says the History Trust has a series coming out in June which explores more deeply a few of the stories that have come out of the photos, and that she hopes as more people view them more family connections might be made.
"We really encourage people to use old photographs – from the Bond collection or anywhere else – to connect with their own family stories and their past," she says.
Click here for more information and tickets for Salty Sessions: Click! and Mr Bond’s Studio: Port Adelaide Through the Lens
