REAL PHOTO POSTCARDS by P.M. KOONIN, HOBART

[Ross Ewington]

I found this card in a postcard dealer's box a few days ago ....
[attachment=0]koonin postcard 1.jpg[/attachment]

Chris Long in "Tasmanian Photographers 1840-1940" lists P.M. Koonin & Co
as photographers at 70 Elizabeth Street, Hobart from 1910 through to 1936.

As the card has a postcard back one can assume that Koonin must have printed
other similar portrait postcards and (drawing a longer bow here) cards with views.

Do any members (or visitors) have other examples of RP cards by Koonin & Co?

footnote: the woman on the right is identified on the back of the card as
"Mabel Mary Grubb".

[Mike]

I have found that P.M.Koonin real photo cards are reasonable uncommon. I have a few but could only find this card after a quick search.

This view looks like a tourist trip to the Springs, Mt Wellington. Could be around Ferntree. Card is unused.

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[Ross Ewington]

Thanks Mike ..... nice card...lovely quality print too ...much better than my example above.
I have seen a couple of photosby P.M. Koonin but real photo PPCs are new to me.

I'll see if I can find out a bit more about this Hobart photographer and "report back"

[Ross Ewington]

Searching through the Hobart Mercury did not reveal much about P.M. Koonin

All I found out was that he was sued for £3 in 1911 (!!!) ..........
[attachment=1]koonin reference 1.jpg[/attachment]

and that he was a keen public speaker about contemporary politics in Siberia.
[attachment=0]koonin reference 2.jpg[/attachment]

More work is required ..... any newspaper advertisements, PO Directory listings, etc ??
I found one reference to another photo (probably similar to Mike's above) in the Tas Archives
collection. http://search.archives.tas.gov.au/defau ... 2217/1/396

[Mike]

Tasmania Post Office Directories 1913, 1928, 1936-1937 lists under photographers,

Koonin & Co P.M. 70 Elizabeth St. Hobart.

Interesting to note that Trowbridge Bros were also postcard publishers. Their cards are scarce.

[Des_Beechey]

Paltis Michel Koonin (b. 1883 or 1884) was a Russian political activist who spent the years 1907–1912 in Australia. He operated a photographic business in Hobart in the years 1910-1912, during which time he produced a small quantity of interesting and high quality photographic print postcards. Here is one of his cards:

You have to love the hats!

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Koonin arrived in Australia in mid-1907. By March 1908 he had appeared in Melbourne as “Secretary of the Organised Unemployed” requesting assistance to stage an “agitation” in support of work for the unemployed. Later that month he took a deputation to the office of the Premier of Victoria but was ejected, causing a disturbance which was reported extensively in the press [1]. On Saturday 21 March he collided with a tram while riding a bicycle and was taken to hospital. The newspaper gave his age as 24 on that occasion.

By December 1909 he was in Hobart. The Examiner [2] reported:

A gentleman whose card indicated that he is P.M. Koonin, BA, FZS, is just now in Hobart and his statements proclaim him to be an interesting person. He is a Russian, and by order of the Czar he was exiled to Siberia for two and a half years as a political prisoner. Mr Koonin is desirous that the people of this peaceful island of Tasmania shall know something of the terrorist activity now going on in Russia

Later The Examiner [3] gave more detail about him;

Mr Koonin is touring Australasia states in pursuance of a mission he has imposed upon himself in connection with the trouble in Russia. He was arrested because he moved a resolution at a students’ meeting warning the Jewish community that a massacre was intended in Kishnioff. About six weeks after that warning the massacre took place. Subsequently Mr Koonin was sent to Siberian prisons, without trial. There he spent two and a half years and then escaped.

After his escape from Siberia he spent two years in South Africa, where he became a naturalised British subject. He held a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Hebrew University at Minak, and was a Fellow of the Zoological Society. He was described as pale, below middle height, speaking excellent English. [4]

Koonin presented lectures in Hobart, Launceston and Sydney during 1910 and 1911. His Hobart lecture titles included “Two years in Siberian dungeons as a political prisoner”, “A Message to the People”, “Siberia and the exile system”, “Red Sunday”, and “The horrors of Siberia and the Russian system in general”. They had good attendances and were extensively reported in the press. His lectures were advertised as illustrated, presumably by lantern slides.

Koonin’s photographic work did not receive the same publicity as his political activites. In Hobart, he registered a firm under the name of “P.M. Koonin and Company” on 8 March, 1910, giving the business as “general photography”, and the address as 70 Elizabeth Street, Hobart. He was listed in the Hobart Electoral Roll, as Paltis Michel Koonin, only once, in 1914, by which time he had left the country. He may have been short of money, as in 1911 a P.M. Koonin was sued for £3 for wrongful detention of a half plate camera focusing screen. It was probably the camera he used for taking his postcards.

Koonin left Hobart by ship for South Africa on 24 April, 1912 [5], and that is the last mention of him in Australian newspapers and official records [6].

[1] The Argus 18 March 1908, p. 6
[2] The Examiner 27 December, 1909, p. 8
[3] The Examiner 5 May 1911, p. 3
[4] The Examiner 5 May 1911, p. 3
[5] The Mercury 24 April 1012, p. 4
[6] Chris Long, in Tasmanian Photographers 1840-1940, lists Koonin’s period of activity in Hobart as 1910-1936, but I suspect that is based on an out of date entry carried forward in Wise’s Tasmania Post Office Directory.

[adjutor54]

This postcard recently came up on eBay. It is taken in exactly the same place as the one Mike thought was on a tourist trip to the Springs, Mt Wellington.
There is a very interesting interview with National Archives Director of Digital and Online Access, Zoe D'Arcy, on the ABC - see http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/201 ... 313186.htm

[Hobbit123]

I have just checked in my index, and I have five Koonin cards (probably bought as a job lot) all of which I describe as "Unidentified carriage descending Mount Wellington" They are all numbered: 148, 258, 335, 491, 531. It would seem that such photos were his 'Bread & Butter" business. The usual problem locating them!

Patrick

[Ross Ewington]

Here's a couple more of Koonin's real photo cards with Mt Wellington travellers.

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I can't recall seeing a "Koonin card" with a colour tint before although this may have been done after purchase of course.

[Des_Beechey]

P.M. Koonan was a Russian who migrated to Australia and set up a photographic studio in Elizabeth Street, Hobart. He only stayed in Hobart for two years 1910-1912. He was an unusual and controversial figure, being classified as an “undesirable” at one stage. His full story is given on my website http://beecheyspostcardhistory.org.au and earlier in this thread.

Most Koonin postcards are of carriage tour groups, apparently on the lower slopes of Mt. Wellington. How he operated we do not know for sure; did he have an arrangement with the tour operators to take photos of groups? From where did he operate – possibly the Fern Tree Hotel? Presumably he developed and printed the photographs overnight, and delivered them to his subjects the next day.

Below is a Koonin card that is in a different style:

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Apart from being well-photographed, this card is of interest for three reasons:

1. It shows a Koonan stamp imprint that I have not seen before: “P.M. Koonan, Tourist Photo’r, Hobart”. Clearly identifying himself as a tourist photographer was an optimistic career choice, as there would not have been all that many tourist groups going up and down the mountain. Maybe this contributed to him remaining in Hobart for only two years.

2. The postmark on the card is partly missing, but “…TREE” remains. Would that have been Fern Tree? Was there a Fern Tree post office in 1910-1912? The boy in the photograph probably lived near there and was photographed by Koonan in a quiet moment between tour groups.

3. This is an unusual instance of a photo taken by a mobile photographer actually being used for correspondence and posted. Most street photographs need not have been printed on postcard-backed photo paper, as they were generally kept or put in an album like any other snapshot, but not in this instance. I wonder who sent it? Perhaps the boy’s mother sending it to her sister or to her mother?

But regardless, it adds a little to our knowledge of Koonin, and shows that he could take a nice photograph.

[admin]

Des, this is very good research and a very interesting story.
Yes, there was a PO at Ferntree and postmarks from this office at the time you mention are often seen - indicating I think a lot of tourists rather than a lot of Ferntree locals using the PO. There were quite a lot of "shacks" in Ferntree too where Hobartians would spend their weekends, not to mention the Mountain huts constructed from local timber . It was probably quite a busy place both summer and winter.

You may be aware the walk from the Hotel to Silver Falls was lit with electric lightbulbs I think around this time making it a nice after-dinner promenade. The area was very popular with Tasmanian tourists .

The thing that strikes me about the cards in general is that technically they are of a very high standard. Koonin's ability to use a full range of shades from complete black to pure white is almost unmatched in my ( probably limited) experience. This does not happen by accident. It requires a very good knowledge of both the paper and the chemicals and much testing to find the optimum development time and temperature of the developer on a specific paper . So may b&w cards from this time are very low in contrast and dont show much care or understanding of the visual appeal of an image which has a full range of tones. Koonin must have been something of a perfectionist from this point of view.

One wonders what happened to Koonin when he left Australia.

Pete

[Des_Beechey]

The information about P.M. Koonin that I posted earlier in this stream was compiled in 2012. Then I discovered an article by Zoe D’Arcy, of the National Archives of Australia [8]. Zoe showed that Koonin had been naturalised as an Australian in 1910. After he left Australia in 1912, he worked in London as an X-Ray dentist, not an entire career change for a man with skills in photography. He lived in Ceylon during 1928-1929 and South Africa 1931-1933, being deported from there in 1933 as an undesirable. He then came back to Australia, relying on his Australian citizenship, and took up practice as a “drugless physician” and naturopath, osteopath, dietician and psychologist. He published books in the late 1930s, under the name Dr. Paul Koonin, promoting the advantages of being a vegetarian. He died in Sydney in 1952.

[Mike]

Found this on AbeBooks. (Mr Pickwicks Fine Old Books)

Food or Drugs?: Vital Facts for Intelligent Health Seekers

Koonin, Dr. Paul M., D.D.Sc. (Kharkov University) (Not a registered medical practitioner – that is, his qualifications were not recognised officially in Australia)

Published by (Sydney: Printed and published by Harry Coy: no date) Suggest 1940s. Quarter cloth boards (that is, hard covers) pp. xvi, 161 and 1 publisher’s advertisement. Illustrated. A treatise opposed to orthodox medical treatment., 1940 .

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