Tyrrell Commons

The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney has become the first museum in the world to release publicly-held historical photographs for access as part of Flickr’s Commons Project.

The Commons is an attempt to share with the world’s public photography archives, while at the same time allowing users to add tags to these photos. The first photos the Powerhouse have put up form part of the Tyrrell Collection, a series of glass plate negatives by Charles Kerry (1857-1928) and Henry King (1855-1923), two of Sydney’s principal photographic studios at the time.

There’s some great photos in there, like this one of the GPO or the modern Australian shearer.