The Old Colonists Photographic Mosaics Collection comprises 18 works featuring images of 1728 men and women, most of whom arrived in the first five years of the establishment of the British province of South Australia, 1836-1841.

The collection is in two parts. The majority of the works were created in response to a banquet for ‘Old Colonists’ hosted by businessman (and former convict) Emanuel Solomon at the Adelaide Town Hall on 28 December 1871 to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the proclamation of South Australia. The social capital of being an Old Colonist endured, irrespective of an individual’s class, occupation, success, or antisocial behaviour. It is the character of self-selection that charges these mosaics with historical significance. Any Old Colonist who chose to come forward was included, and consequently all strata of South Australian settler society are captured in the works.

The mosaic of 597 female Old Colonists is acknowledged by historians and curators of Australian photography as a unique portrayal of nineteenth-century women. The second series of mosaics was created in the first two decades of the twentieth century to commemorate the mid-nineteenth century male settlers of South Australia’s remote northern and western regions. These works complement the 1872 mosaics, providing a greater representation of settlers in remote regions.

The Old Colonists Photographic Mosaics Collection depicts the forebears of several hundred thousand Australians, and many more whose genealogies intersect by marriage and other relationships. The portraits are prized by family historians and in hundreds of instances are the only surviving image of an individual.

The collection was the focus of a 15-year project from 2007 to 2022, to preserve and digitise the mosaics, and to identify the men and women depicted. The identification of previously unknown individuals reveals hundreds of biographical case studies, many of which embody unexpected aspects of colonial history. The growing data set also reveals the relationships and networks of individuals. In these ways the Old Colonists Photographic Mosaics Collection contributes to a more complex narrative about the first and second generations of a nineteenth-century settler society. The images are used by family historians worldwide.