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Exploring our Indigenous history through photography

30 April 2008

Children from Ebenezer Mission

Photograph detail: unidentified children, Ebenezer Mission, early twentieth century. Private collection.

Dr Jane Lydon and Professor Lynette Russell from the Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies will produce the first systematic and comprehensive history of Aboriginal photography as part of a $300,000 four-year Australian Research Council funded research project.

Aboriginal Visual Histories: Photographing Indigenous Australians will, for the first time, review photographs of Aboriginal people in key collections around Australia and in Europe from 1841 to the present day.

The project will include collaboration with descendents in an effort to incorporate Indigenous perspectives. A range of scholarly and popular histories as well as a major exhibition will also be developed.

Dr Lydon said the project would provide a new and valuable resource for the study of Australian history.

"A growing body of postcolonial research has established the importance of visual imagery in creating and popularising ideas about race and cultural difference," Dr Lydon said.

"This project will explore how we have represented ourselves and the place of Australian Indigenous people both historically and in the present.

"It will also strengthen our understanding of Australia's place in the region and the world by showing how we have been perceived internationally through visual imagery -- and specifically what is unique about Australia and its Indigenous people through international eyes."

Dr Lydon said some nineteenth century visual stereotypes were used to argue that Aboriginal people were primitive in comparison with Western society.

"Others showed their supposed assimilation in terms of the appropriation of European customs such as clothing and housing," Dr Lydon said.

"This is particularly true of images of disorderly Aboriginal women and their homes which have persisted into the present.

"These images were used to argue that they were unable to care for their children and provided justification for official intervention and child removal."

Dr Lydon will also convene a Visual Cultures and Colonialism: Indigeneity in Local and Transnational Imagery conference from 1-3 May bringing together key speakers on the topic. For more information visit the conference web page.