aboriginal social photography

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Picturing: Aboriginal social and s o l i ~ i c a l photography .Gary Lee

Aboriginal Australians have been the subject of the camera'sinscrutable gazesince the mid1800s, as early specimens forcolonial anthropometric photographs and later as ethniccuriosities in staged photo-postcards. These latter images inparticularwere widely distributed in Australia and overseas fromthe 1890s to the 19OOs. By the turn of the century in Australiafirms were established which specifically served to supplymuseums with Aboriginal ethnographic 'curios'. Similarcompanies overseas supplied extensively illustrated cataloguesand photographs which were used largely for the marketing ofAboriginal material culture to a world market. The photographs,usually depicting posed Aborigines often surrounded with amish-mash of artefacts, were widely reproduced and distributedalong with the 'curios'. Aboriginal people had no say in the

making of these photographs. Permission was not needed byEuro-Australians to force or coerce people to 'pose' and it was tobe a very long t ime before they got to be on the other side of thecamera.

Photographs taken by early British anthropologists in Australiasuch as those made on the Cambridge Expedition to the TorresStraits in 1898-9 by A C Haddon and by BaldwinSpencer inCentral Australia after the turn of the century provide a uniquevisual legacy. It is the photography of the anthropologist DonaldThornson which I bel ieve to be the most notable. Thomson had apersonal interest in photography which he pursued during hisanthropology undergraduate years at Sydney University andafter graduating in 1928 he undertook field work at Cape York inQueensland. It is his superb photographs of Aboriginal people

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taken on this a nd o n subsequent trips to Amhem Land an dCentral Australia which are still highly regarded today (Dixonan d Huxley 1985:14), While many anthropologists have takenphotographs of Aborigines over the years, with the likes ofHaddon an d Spencer even using movie cameras, the imagesm a de b yThomson stand ou t for their sensitivity an d aestheticbeauty - qualities not usually associated with anthropologicalpicturemaking/recording.

It is difficult to ascertainwhen Aboriginal people first took up aposition on the other s ide o f the camera in any sor t of fonnal way.Available records point to Aboriginal people as takingphotographs at least 70 years ago in Australia. In the 1930sJimmie Barker, an Aboriginal ma n from New South Wales, notonly shot bu t also developed an d printed his ow n photos.! Thiswould have been a unique first an d most certainlya highlyunusual occurrence. Two decades later in Amhem Land,Winuoidj, a localma n took photographsin the 1950s with anEnsign Full-Vue camera while assisting the photographer AxelPoignant on one of his field excursions.lAboriginal people are redefining themselves through

photography an d using it as an aesthetic an d documentary tool topresent their perceptions about Aboriginal communities an d theirties to land. In this paper I will look at Aboriginal social an dpolitical art, which as has been made with thecamera by artists,w i th a n emphasis on early photographerswh o in many sensespaved the way for those wh o have followed. Most of these earlypractitioners are established within thewider Australian artsphere an d some of theirimages have attained iconic status, notleast for Aboriginal people.Professional Aboriginal photography can be said to have begun

in the 1960s with Mervyn Bishop in Sydney w h en h ewasemployed by Fairfax newspapers in 1963 as a press photographer,a position he stayed in for over twenty years. By this time therewere no doubt Aboriginal families an d individuals w h o o w ne dcameras an d there m u st b e a treasure trove of Aboriginalphotographs as testimony to their interest in this medium,Although Jimmie Barker an d Winuoidj are remarkable examplesof early Aboriginal involvement - an d there could have beenothers except that little data is available, it is through Bishop thatthe conceptof Aborigine-as-photographer really came into itsown. This was highlighted further when in 1972 he was awardedthe Press Photographerof theYear with a striking photo titled ALife and Death Dash, of a nu n rushing down a street with anAboriginal child, suspected of swallowing an overdose of pills, inher arms.During his long tenure at the Fairfax Press Bishop was

seconded to the newly formed Department of Aboriginal Affairs(DAA) in Canberra as press photographer. From 1974-1979during his t ime at DAA he covered many Significant Aboriginalevents an d gatherings an d none more so than the Wattie Creekhandover of land in the Northern Territory in 1975. Bishop'sphotograph of the-then Prime Minister GoughWhitlam pouringred earth back into the hand of senior Gurindji elder VincentLingiari has been widely reproduced both by oA A and others.This image encapsulates the land rights victory hard w on b y theGurindji people an d the official acknowledgment of that by theFederal Labour government of the day. This photo was firstexhibited in 1986at the NAIOOC exhibition in Sydney thanks tocurator Ace Bourke. In 1991 Bishopwas honoured with aretrospective of his work - In Dreams: Mervyn Bishop: Thirty Yearsof Photography 1960-1990, at the Australian Centre forPhotography inSydney. theShow which was curated by Tracey

Moffatt wh o also edited the catalogue. For the first time Bishop'ssocial an d political documentary work could be appreciated by awider audience all at the one time.

By the 1980s more Aboriginal photographers began to emergean d garner recognition. Several significant events occurred in thisdecade which to facilitated this. After The Tent Embassi wasaphotographic display which used historical archival imagescoordinated by Marcia Langton in 1981 as par t of the ApmiraLand Rights Fundraising Exhibition of that same year at thePaddington Town Hall in Sydney. The photographs chosenillustrated Aboriginal struggles for land an d self-detenninationwhile highlighting the negative an d positive effects that suchimages could have in terms of Aboriginal politics an d aspirationsfor justice. Another event was the 1982 Commonwealth Gameswhich were held, in Brisbane amidst wide-spread Aboriginalprotests. Land Rights marches were held withmany people beingarrested. Photographs of these marches were included in thepublication After The Tent Embassy which was published in thefollowing year. In 1986 the work of some of the-then emergingphotographers an d artists was shown in the aforementionedNAlDOC exhibitioncurated by Ace Bourke. As well as theMervyn Bishop image of Vincent Lingiari at Wattie Creek, TraceyMoffatt's series Some Lads of dancers from the NationalAboriginal an d Islander Dance School an d Brenda LCroft'sphotos about black deaths in custody come to mind. MichaelRiley's sensual portraits of Aboriginal contemporaries were alsoshown in this important exhibition.TheAustralian Bicentenary celebrations of 1988 saw the largest

gathering of Aboriginal people in Sydney. Inwhat was called theBig March or the Invasion Day Rally held on January 26th, ratherthan 'celebrating' 200 years of white settlement, up to 250,000Aboriginal an d Torres Strait Islander people from across thecountry marched through the city in protest.-Alana Harris'powerful images of this huge protest march were celebrated inthe booklet Australia's too old to celebrate birthdays4, TheBicentenary year also sa w the writer, artist an d activist KevinGilbert curate an exhibition titled Inside Black Australia: Aboriginalphotographers exhibition, Treaty 88 which was held inSydney in1989 at the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative. Among theAboriginal artists wh o exhibited were Alana Hams, Ellen Jose,Tracey French an d Wayne Barker. Gilbert was the driving forcean d organiser behind theTreaty '88 Campaign which di d muchnot only to raise funds bu t to also bring further attention to themany political events, rallies an d meetings in the lead-up to theBicentenary itself.Another important photographic event in this decade was thepublication of After 200 Years: Photographic essays of Aboriginal andIslander Australia today,; Aboriginal photographers Alana Harris,Peter McKenzie, Kathy Fisher an d Ricky Maynard were amongthe contributors to this volume. Another interesting publicationfrom this time which induded photographs taken by Aboriginalpeople was the book KlIndat laru Mob: An exhibition of photographsby lOll Rhodes and the KUlldat Jam community 1986-1989." Some ofthese exuberant images were taken by community membersthemselves, many ofwhom had never used a camera before.In the 1980s photography started to become an important tool

for Aboriginal people through which they could make their ow ninterpretations of their social an d political lives. The 1988Bicentenary certainly impacted on this fact an d in bringing to theattention ofa wider public the talents ofa number ofAboriginalartists. Alana Harris' preViously mentioned 1988 photographs ofthe Invasion Day Rally is onecase in point. Harris, wh o is no w


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the Senior Photographer at the Australian Institute of Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra, is sometimesunderestimated, I feel possibly because her subject matter is notalways 'Aboriginal'. At the age of nineteen Harris was invited toparticipate in the After 200 Years project in which she documentedthe people and community of Leeton. Her black and whitelandscape studies have a sensuous vitality (which one can alsosee in herportraiturework) as in her images Bush Renewal or Rockand Reed both from 1991. Two years before in 1989 Harristravelled throughout North Queensland on assignment for theQueensland Art Gallery's collaborative exhibition Balance 1990 7to photograph Aboriginal murals on public buildings incommunities such as Palm Island, Cairns and Townsville. In thatsame year she participated in Narragunnawali, an exhibition byAboriginal people living in Canberra and the surrounding region,where she felt she gained status as an art is t as a result of theexhibition and that it alsomeant "an increased economic returnfrom her p h o t o g r a p h s " . ~ Her black and white portrait of IrisClayton from this show was one of the standouts for this author.PeterMcKenzie is another photographer who doesn't get as

much attention as he probably should. His documentation ofhisfamily, and his well-known images of the La Perouse communitywhere he grew up spring, to mind. McKenzie was one of theAboriginal photographers who contributed to the After 200 Yearsproject. One ofhis images included Gordie, Troy and Bruce 'LArpa'Stewart at Redfern Oval after Troy Jlad kicked the winning goal, 1987.Another ofMcKenzie's series, of the La Perouse football team

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Alana Harris A"ti-bice"tc,,"inl March, January 26th 1988, Sydney, NSW,colour photograph, image courtesy of the artistcaptures their triumph and joy at winning the grand final,beautifully presented in one photograph in particular from thisseries titled John Amatto, Darren Champion, Chris Lyons: GrandFinal Winners (LA PerOl/se United), 1991." In 1989McKenzieaccompanied the Australian participants to Paris for theMagiciens de la Terre exhibition as the Aboriginal curator. There hephotographed the Yuendumu artists creating a magnificentground painting installation.to McKenzie continues to documentthe social and political realities of not just the La Perouse but thewider Aboriginal community, lectures, curates and works


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aboriginal social photography

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