C.R. KENNEDY & COMPANY CELEBRATES 85 YEARS
Back in 1934, photography as a popular past-time was still in its infancy. There was virtually no Japanese camera industry, 35mm was a relatively new format for stills, and the compact single-lens-reflex design was just starting to appear, but wouldn’t become widely available until after the Second World War. More generally, much of Europe was in the grip of political or economic upheavals, while over here the ‘White Australia’ immigration policy was still in place.
In that same year Clement Robertson Kennedy, the descendant of Scottish immigrants from the early 1870s, established a small company in Melbourne to import and distribute optical products and firearms, initially mostly from Germany. Eighty-five years later C.R. Kennedy & Company is Australia’s biggest – and most successful – independent distributor of photography equipment, and has branched into the related areas of medical imaging, surveying, surveillance systems and sports optics. It has offices all around the country as well as in New Zealand, and employs over 260 people. And it is still an entirely family-run company, with third-generation Kennedys now involved in all the various divisions.
Today, the photo imaging division represents a long list of major brands (and many smaller ones) such as Pentax/Ricoh, Ilford, Profoto, Phase
