Aboriginal Visual Histories: Photographing Indigenous Australians

This project will for the first time 1. review photographs of Aboriginal people in key collections around Australia and in Europe, 2. produce the first systematic and comprehensive history of photographing Aboriginal people from the Australian inception of the medium in 1841 to the present day, and will place this genre within a global visual economy, and 3., collaborate with descendants to incorporate Indigenous perspectives. It will provide a new and valuable resource for Australian history, will make Aboriginal heritage available to descendant communities, and will produce a range of scholarly and popular histories and a major exhibition.