About the Aboriginal Visual Histories Project
Australian colonialism
As historians of Australian photography have noted in passing, Aboriginal people were an enduring source of curiosity almost from the medium’s antipodean inception in 1841. Despite the prominence of images of Indigenous people from the earliest days of photography in Australia, and the fascination expressed by white photographers regarding Aboriginal people and culture, no general account of this complex visual language has yet been produced.
Historical photographs constitute a rich and relatively-untapped archive for understanding the past, offering a fresh perspective on processes such as colonialism. This project will draw together the huge archive of photographs of Indigenous people in collections and institutions across Australia and Europe to create a comprehensive history. Such a history will be a valuable resource for indigenous communities, institutions and researchers, as well as aiding a range of popular and scholarly histories.
The international context
This project explores the important role played by photographs of Australian Aboriginal people within transnational debates about identity and culture during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This visual imagery contributed significantly to the development of science and anthropology on a global level, and the project will explore the images’ reception and circulation within international visual economies of popular, evangelical, scientific or administrative discourse. Instead of seeing ideas, resources and people flowing outwards from the ‘metropole’ to be reflected by colonial developments, the postcolonial theoretical project of ‘provincialising Europe’ has instead addressed the ways that coloniser and colonised were linked by dynamic, interactive, reciprocal relations, as colonial experience and knowledge shaped the European social order. The AVH Project will address how the images express a complex range of contemporary ideas about race, human difference and society, the Australian nation and global relations; intersecting with a range of popular, evangelical, scientific and administrative discourses, photographs potentially reveal how scientific theories and political arguments were articulated and popularised through the accessibility, clarity and impact of visual imagery.
Indigenous collaboration
Images of Indigenous people by white photographers were often captured for exploitative reasons: whether it was for commercial gain, government surveillance, or scientific investigation, these photographs frequently represent relations of great inequality between photographer and photographed. Nonetheless, research has shown that many Aboriginal communities greatly value historical photographs of their ancestors. Such images represent otherwise unknown ancestors and relatives, who have often been lost as a result of official processes. Photographs can also provide information about places and relationships which are unavailable from other sources. In this sense, the research from the AVH project aims to re-connect photographs of Indigenous people with their descendents.In the aftermath of colonialism, one of the major steps toward reconciliation between former colonists and Indigenous peoples has been acknowledgement of its effects and concrete attempts at restitution. Australian institutions have been world leaders in repatriating historical artefacts, records and skeletal material held in museum collections - yet no wide-ranging formal analysis of returning Australian photographs exists. In addition, there are very few analyses of current Indigenous (re)valuations of photography. This project addresses Indigenous uses of the medium and aims to explore the distinctive ways photographs are seen by Aboriginal people.
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Camera Antipodea Exhibition: Picturing Aboriginal Australia 1860-1940
Historical photographs communicate historical narratives: an image from the past can engage and connect people in the present. Recent analysis of historical photographs has emphasised their status as objects that are circulated within networks of exchange and communication. -The meanings of photographs are culturally and historically contingent upon their use and context. In this a sense – a photograph is a living source, and it is constantly being re-interpreted.
The exhibition will draw upon previously un-utilized collections, exploring the changing meanings of images over time as they moved through international circuits. The exhibition will be highly innovative, using both traditional and new media technologies, including an online exhibition, to showcase the histories that these photographs tell.
In keeping with the collaborative nature of the project and the role that Aboriginal people will have as full participants in the research, the exhibition will also enable people to ‘speak back’ to the images and offer further contextualisation to the images of their ancestors. In this way the exhibition aims to ‘value-add’ to the collections. The online aspect of the exhibition will also be interactive, enabling the public (and Aboriginal people in particular) to give feedback and contribute.