Through Mr Safier's collaboration with Museum of Brisbane curator Phil Manning, visitors to City Hall can embark on a journey back in time through the Sit. Pose. Snap exhibition, which showcases Brisbane photography from 1850 to 1950.

The 340 photographs in the exhibition were drawn from Mr Safier's collection and he has been described as "one of the most significant collectors of portrait photography in Australia".

Mr Safier's love of local photographic history started through the use of his mother's Box Brownie. Throughout his childhood he gradually upgraded to better and more capable cameras and at 15 years old he was gifted early family photographs, which further stimulated his interest.

In 1992, he bought a Brisbane family's photograph album secondhand and became interested in local photographers. It turned out the grandchildren of two of the photographers whose work was in the album were patients of his and since then he has keenly researched the lives of Brisbane photographers.

"I have over 40,000 photographs, the majority being Australian, but also large numbers of British and New Zealand as well as many other countries," Mr Safier said.

The exhibition created through the use of part of Mr Safier's collection educates visitors about the birth of Brisbane photography in 1850, when a travelling salesman arrived offering portraits using the daguerreotype method, which involved producing the framed image on glass, whereas previously settlers had relied on oil paintings.

This was followed by the invention of the ambrotype, a much more refined and more accessible development on glass, and then the tintype, a wet-plate photograph directly applied to metal which could produce 12 images on the one sheet.

In the 1860s, the carte de visites were created, which involved printing paper photographs mounted onto cardboard, the size of business cards. They were popularised by royal families, who produced the portraits and made them commercially available to general public.

Everyday citizens followed in the footsteps of royalty by mimicking their poses and producing their own portraits on cardboard and distributing to friends and family.

"This was the first time having a photograph of yourself was made available to a wider audience," Mr Manning said.

Brisbane photography continued to develop during the latter half of the 1800s, with film later introduced and cameras gradually became smaller and more compact.

About the turn of the century Eastman Kodak introduced the Box Brownie, which was commercially available for just one dollar.

"Suddenly cameras were in the hands of the householder, we were able to take our own photographs and document our own lives," Mr Manning said.

The Box Brownie sparked a change in portrait photography. The introduction of a high-quality 35 millimetre camera in 1924 saw the rise of street photographers, who would go to popular spots, photograph people and give them a ticket to purchase the postcard-form picture from their respective agency.

Up until the 1950s the majority of photography was black and white, but colour was used more and more during the 1950s before colour prints then became popular from the 1960s onwards.

However, the exhibition doesn't solely focus on those people who were in the picture, but also takes a keen interest in who was behind the lens.

Between 1850 and 1950 there were hundreds of Brisbane photographers, with a heavy concentration in the CBD.

"It was a very popular business and at any one time you could have multiple studios on Queen Street," Mr Manning said.

There are 83 different local photographers and studios represented in the exhibition, with Mr Safier priding himself on giving visitors an insight into the photographers rather than just the pictures.

"We tried to give people an idea of what it was like going into an early Brisbane photography studio, with visitors able to go take a picture against Brisbane backdrops and use filters (on social media) to replicate what an old picture would have looked like," Mr Manning said.

"I hope after visiting the exhibition people understand how the nature of photography hasn't changed despite technology.

"I also hope visitors think about how we take portraits of ourselves is still about how we present ourselves to others - as much as it's a record in time, it's also a record of who we are and who we want to be."

Sit. Pose. Snap. Brisbane Portrait Photography 1850 - 1950 is open to the public until July 30 and a full list of the Museum of Brisbane's 2017 exhibitions can be found here.