Juno Gemes: Our Community - A Great Place To Be: Events

The photographic record is a visual mode of historical practice that is underrated in Australian historiography. This forum explores the way community history is refracted through the camera lens, capturing and exposing many levels of human interaction. The forum, in combination with the photographic exhibition, Our Community: A Great Place to Be! is part of a joint research project entitled Unsettling Histories: Australian Indigenous Modes of Historical Practice, between the Australian Centre for Indigenous History and the National Museum of Australia.

Curator Frances Peters-Little explains that the communities revealed in this exhibition raise many points for discussion. She explains:

The concept of a 'community' is complex. Who and what makes a community and what it does, generally depend upon those who live in it and, most importantly, its history. The Walgett Shire communities of north-west New South Wales are remarkable on both accounts. They have a unique multicultural history which is rarely understood by people living outside of regional Australia and who often believe that multiculturalism only exists in urban Australia. United by a common bond of attachment they feel towards each other and towards their community. They express their sense of belonging in many different ways.

Speakers

Photographers and filmmakers: Juno Gemes, Sharon Aldrick, Ron Blake, Frances Peters-Little, Sean Kennedy, Simeon Bryan and Frank Haines
Academics: Dr Catherine De Lorenzo, Professor Ann McGrath, Professor Nicolas Peterson, Dr Jane Lydon, Dr Catherine Summerhayes, Professor Heather Goodall, and Dr Leonarda Kovacic
Museum professionals: Margo Neale
Community representatives: Harry Hall, Ted Fields, Drago Panich, Leslie Tighe, Don Lillyman, Victor Beale, Dr Vlad Matic, Hugh Percy, and Professor Larissa Behrendt
Performers: Jimmy Little, Victor Beale and James Henry

Papers

Catherine De Lorenzo, 'Community photography and activism: Engaging with Redfern'
Catherine Summerhayes, 'David MacDougall's Link-Up Diary: A cultural performance of "exposure' as new history'
Jane Lydon, 'Revisions: Current Koori uses of colonial photography'
Heather Goodall, '"Karoo": Communities reclaiming historical and anthropological photos'
Nicolas Peterson, 'The Yolngu community as photographed by Donald Thomson, 1935-1942'
Leonarda Kovacic, 'The emotive power of the visual'

Forum: History Through a Lens

Unsettling Histories: Visual Modes of Historical Practice

Speakers

Papers