The newly opened Turks Head Gallery was set to host hundreds at the weekend as part of photography festival.
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Director Dirk Wallace, who launched the revamped space in February, had to change plans rapidly due to COVID-19.
"The government directed all galleries to close their doors and it was the right thing to do," he said.
"No one wanted to come out of their house, so it was pointless to stay open anyway.
"I'm still doing fine art printing and some other things, but on the whole the doors have been closed.
"We had a huge range of things we were doing; exhibition-wise we were part of Photo 2020 with MAMA, but that's now postponed until 2021."
Mr Wallace decided to still run a workshop with Sydney portrait snapper Tim Bauer, Photographer of the Year at the 2019 Australian Magazine Awards.
"I suggested to him he could do it in his studio, and we'd run it online," Mr Wallace said.
"There's been a lot of interest in it - we'll run some more workshops when all of this dies down."
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One positive of the restrictions is that Mr Wallace has had time to work on a dark room and other aspects of his gallery and photography hub that were not complete for the opening.
"This has been a nice reprieve to do all those jobs, but everyone's devastated [about the restrictions], obviously," he said.
"As a photographer, your work revolves around meeting people and being in their space.
"It's devastated the whole community, but the arts scene has really felt it.
"This will end at some point, and we'll come back in leaps and bounds.
"It's probably taken me five years to get to this stage, so I'm definitely not going to give up."
