Images help reposition Indigenous storytelling

FOR the curator of Bendigo Art Gallery’s First Nations Photography exhibition, some images in the collection hold a very personal connection.  

The art gallery’s First Nations Engagement Curator, Lorraine Brigdale, said the idea grew from two family photographs of her nan, a Yorta Yorta woman called Dorothy Peters. 

The collection is a mix of both historical photographs of Indigenous people taken by “white” photographers and the work of contemporary photographers with Aboriginal heritage. 

Brigdale said it was designed to “turn the tide” on the narratives presented of First Nation’s peoples in the past, with the limelight moved from images shot through the lens of colonisers to how Indigenous people might want to present their cultures. 

 

The origin 

Included in the exhibition are two photos of Brigdale’s grandmother, an original and a manipulated copy. 

She said it looked like the edited version was created to make her nan look “more white,” for reasons unknown to her family. 

However, she said her relatives believe it might have been created to afford Dorothy the privileges of a white person when, in the early 1900s, there were many restrictions on the lives of First Nations peoples. 

Brigdale said she only learned for certain that her grandmother was an Aboriginal woman as a young adult, after doing extensive research with her sister and meeting her grandmother’s brother’s son, her first cousin once removed. 

Her family had discovered records of her nan at Cummeragunga Mission Station near the Murray River, northeast of Moama. 

Dorothy had lived at Cummeragunga until leaving in early adulthood to marry Brigdale’s grandfather of European ancestry. 

“She ended up leaving the mission to get married because my grandfather wasn’t allowed to live on the mission, he was white,” she said. 

“At the time, they had to ask permission to leave the mission, they weren’t allowed to just go, certainly not allowed to just get married.” 

She said her grandparents had met on the mission before white people were banned from staying. 

They spent some time living in Moama before moving to South Gippsland where her mother and her mother’s other siblings grew up. 

In the early 1900s in Australia, exemptions could be granted to Indigenous people which overrode restrictions they were otherwise subject to. 

These allowed them to live with the same privileges of white Australians, like being able to travel freely and obtain public education, pensions, and housing. 

“Her complete refusal to discuss the fact that she had Aboriginal family really fits in with that, but we don’t know because we didn’t ever see a certificate of hers,” said Brigdale. 

“It was quite a common thing for especially Aboriginal people whose skin wasn’t really dark, and my nan’s skin wasn’t really dark.  

“I mean, you can see that she was an Aboriginal woman, but she could have been not, especially with the changes that were made to the photo.” 

Obtaining such privileges meant people were forced to sacrifice everything associated with “black” culture. 

Those with exemptions were not permitted to engage in language or cultural practices, or with other Indigenous people, including family. 

Brigdale said her grandmother never acknowledged or spoke about her past on the mission or her experience as an Indigenous person. 

At the time, the couple already had a young son to whom Brigdale said her grandfather gave an ultimatum.  

“He said if you stay here with Granny, you’ll never see us or your mum again, and if you come with us, you come with your mum, you’ll never see Granny and you’ll never come back to the mission,” she said. 

“And the little boy decided to stay with Granny. 

“She brought her whole family up on her own without any help, which is a totally different way of life for an Aboriginal person because they would have always had family members around them.” 

Brigdale said the first son did end up seeing his parents again on a visit to Gippsland before going off to fight in World War Two. 

However, he was introduced to her mother and siblings as their uncle. However, Brigdale said all the kids knew the truth. 

“Kids just know,” she said. 

Before Ms Brigdale’s mother passed away, she said she got to meet her cousin who was from Shepparton, closer to where the mission had been, and where her nan’s sister had moved to later in life. 

“It was such a beautiful thing,” said she. “He said to me, ‘I never thought this would happen, my mother fretted all her life for her sister. It gives me goosebumps when I think about it’. 

“Once we started to get back in contact with her family, they were overjoyed to have us back in contact again.” 

While she said her family has come a long way in their understanding of their matriarch’s heritage, they have largely put together what they can from scraps of information, and many pieces remain missing. 

“We’re putting together the story together slowly; both my sister and I are still looking for information. 

“We can only put together what we think happened to her. We can’t say that we know for sure.” 

 

The exhibition 

When it comes to the exhibition at the Bendigo Art Gallery, First Nations Photography was designed to be a platform for Indigenous stories by Indigenous photographers. 

“Aboriginal people didn’t used to have any say in what photos were taken of them, but the contemporary photos that we see today are the exact opposite of that,” said Brigdale. 

“The photos taken by Aboriginal people can actually tell the story of the country, the land, people, and it tells it in the contemporary photographer’s style with no restrictions on it.  

“There’s a strong desire and push in these images to give it that contemporary Aboriginal lens. 

“You can see the engagement that happens when it’s an Aboriginal person looking at it because it’s a recognition of what’s gone on.” 

Some of the images in the exhibition show Indigenous Australians in settings made to look like natural environments that were in fact curated on studio sets.  

“Back when colonisers were roaming this land, photography of Aboriginals was not taken by Aboriginal people,” said Brigdale. 

“It was taken by professional photographers who used to travel around the country and take photographs of Aboriginal people for various reasons.  

“The photos were taken in order to back up the narrative of what they were trying to say.” 

 

The journey 

Brigdale said it took her a long time to accept her own Aboriginal heritage and putting together the exhibition stirred up a lot of difficult feelings. 

“It’s created quite a bit of emotion, and only because I had to sort of look fairly deeply and think about all of this,” she said. 

“And also, actually including my nan in the exhibition was a really big decision to make. 

“It wasn’t an easy decision; I did ask my sisters and my brother for permission.” 

Brigdale likened it to a series of steps, such as the series of photographs in Michael Cook’s piece titled The Mission. 

The work depicts the journey of an Indigenous woman from before being forced into a mission to life afterward. 

“In the early years of going through it, I was helping my sister find the information and that was quite traumatic for me. I’d been in denial because we never spoke about it,” she said. 

“Doing this exhibition was just another step, it wasn’t the biggest step, not by a long shot.  

“The biggest thing about it was, my nan, through her decision at the time, and through the decision she made every day again for her life, she was invisible, really. 

“Her reality was never there, it dawned on me one day; my nan’s been invisible all these years, and now she’s not. I hope she’s okay with it. 

“When I look at the contemporary photography in the exhibition and I refer it back to the historical images, I can see a direct link from them to each other, and they bring up the same stories and the same questions.” 

 

First Nations Photography is on at the Bendigo Art Gallery until Sunday 4 February.