A Visual Narrative of Antipodean Colonisation, Resistance & Massacres

The topic of ‘landscape’ within contemporary photography is a complex idea that involves several diverse photography and visual cultural meanings. Landscape photography can be classic renditions of the natural environment within a picturesque tradition found in early English landscape painting, however, culturally, it can also mean images of other types of environments involving humanity interactions and reminiscent of urbanscapes, industrial environments, cityscapes, crime and trauma sites and others. Contemporary landscape photography may comprise postcard-perfect depictions of natural environments, deadpan urban environments from the new topographic artists, snapshots by tourists visiting a scenic lookout, or even Google Maps topographic representations of the world.

While this body of work comprises landscape images, the work isn’t about the landscape or the objects within the space framed by the camera. This work is about ‘place’ and the political, historical and traumatic events that occurred at these sites or within their vicinity. The places photographed in this work are an attempt to draw attention to the violence referred to as the frontier wars between the British military, settlers and Indigenous peoples during colonisation. The objective of the work is to enhance a contemporary consciousness and hopefully alter the collective historical narrative that suggests the British displacement and occupation of Aboriginal Nations was a peaceful transition.  Australian history has a blind spot when it comes to the violence during this period involving fierce resistance from the Indigenous people, the internment of families into Aboriginal missions and the hundreds of massacres across the entire country. Each photograph is linked to a traumatic experience during the colonisation of Australia that hopefully assists in developing notions of place, memory, history and identity.

The work offers a contemporary presence with a connection to the past while offering a national narrative in a visual form. The locations are selected from sources that have reported on incidents and estimated their locations. Photography was conducted using a lensless (pinhole) large format film camera, producing a slightly soft focus, further evocating a sense of the past and history. Nelson Mandela was reported to say that truth is an essential element for reconciliation. This series of photographs attempts to raise the collective consciousness and help understand a more accurate historical narrative reflecting on the colonial violence for reconciliation to move forward. The title Out of the Shadows is an obvious pun on photography and proffers the truth coming to light using a creative arts medium within a visual narrative form.

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Project Status: Ongoing