J.J. Dwyer came to Kalgoorlie in the late 1800s with a dream of opening his own photography studio. He worked hard to achieve his dream, and he soon opened his own photography studio in Hannan Street.

Dwyer took countless studio portraits of his many clients, and he also maintained an interest in documenting Kalgoorlie and Goldfields life, including social events, industrial activities (even taking images in underground mines), and landscapes.

In 1917 Dwyer sold his studio to fellow photographer Thomas Mackay, who ran the studio until 1945.

The Western Australian Museum has digitised a collection of several thousand images by Dwyer and Mackay from the Kalgoorlie-Boulder region, in a time period spanning the 1890s to the 1920s, which are available through this collections site.