Hedda Morrison

Who is Hedda Morrison?

Hedda Morrison was a German photographer who created memorable documentary images of Beijing, Hong Kong and Sarawak from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Born Hedda Hammer in Stuttgart, 13 December 1908, she studied at the State Institute for Photography in Munich. Not finding the political or economic situation in Germany to her liking, in 1933 she took up a position at Hartung's, a German-owned commercial photographic studio in the old Legation Quarter of the city then known as Peiping. During her time in Beijing she took many photographs of the old city and its people, temples and markets, mostly using a Rolleiflex medium-format camera.

In 1940 she met Alastair Morrison, son of the famous George Ernest Morrison, the influential London Times correspondent in Peking. They married in 1946 and left China shortly afterwards, first for Hong Kong and then to Sarawak, where Alastair became a government district officer. During her 20-year stay in Sarawak, Hedda accompanied her husband on official journeys and also made numerous independent photographic tours. She wrote two major books on Sarawak, Sarawak and Life in a Longhouse.

In 1967 the Morrisons settled in Canberra, Australia. Hedda died in Canberra in 1991, at the age of 82.