Education
Born Hedda Hammer in Stuttgart, 13 December 1908, she studied at the State Institute for Photography (Bäyerische Staatslehranstalt für Lichtbildwesen) in Munich.
Born Hedda Hammer in Stuttgart, 13 December 1908, she studied at the State Institute for Photography (Bäyerische Staatslehranstalt für Lichtbildwesen) 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.
She wrote two major books on Sarawak, Sarawak (1957) and Life in a Longhouse (1962).
In 1967 the Morrisons settled in Canberra, Australia. Hedda died in Canberra in 1991, at the age of 82.
Many of her images are archived in the Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University and at Cornell University, New New York There is a large collection of her German, Asian and Australian work in the Powerhouse Museum.