Ebenezer Tasman MARCHANT 'Ebb' Marchant was one member of a large family of South Australian photographers.   He was a son of photographer Philip Marchant (q.v.) and brother of Samuel Bowering Marchant, also a photographer. Cabinet photograph taken at "Marchant's Studio, Gawler." (Text continues below.)

‘Ebb’ Marchant was born at Latrobe, Tasmania, on 8 December 1887 and was the youngest child of photographer Philip Marchant (q.v.). His mother died before he was three years old and in 1895 his father returned to Gawler with his family where he re-established himself as a photographer in the town. Ebb worked in his father’s studio and when his father’s health began to fail he progressively assumed more responsibility until 1910, when his father died and he had to take over the running of the business. In the late 1920s he used a Cirkut panoramic camera to produce one-piece 180-degree panoramic photographs six feet long and ten inches wide (see PANORAMAS).

Above: Ebb Marchant in front of Marchant's Studio in Murray Street, Gawler. Postcard photograph.

Ebb was a very talented person with a wide variety of interests: conjuring, hypnotism, gardening, and music, playing the piano, banjo, organ and violin. On 2 September 1922 he married Elvira Elsa Klaebe and in 1923 their only child Trevor was born. Trevor continued the family tradition of studio photography at Gawler until moving to Adelaide where he became deeply involved with photographic printing and processing, thus ending three generations and 110 years’ involvement with photographic portraiture.

See also MARCHANT FAMILY entry in index at left.

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