Samuel Sweet (1825–86) was born in Portsea, England and spent most of his professional life working as a sea captain and surveyor. In about 1863 he took his family to Queensland to grow cotton, then moved to Adelaide in about 1866 where he worked as a photographer. He returned to sea in 1869 to survey the northern coastline of Australia. In 1875 he retired as a sea captain and opened a photographic studio in Adelaide. Over the last ten years of his life, Sweet travelled extensively around South Australia with a horse-drawn darkroom, documenting landscapes, settlements and industrial endeavours. In the early 1880s he was one of the first photographers to use a dry-plate printing process.

(2023)