Confronting the Coloniality and Credibility of the Camera

Maeve Sullivan, University of Sydney

By confronting the colonial gaze through appropriation and auto-ethnography, Indigenous artists seek to confront the politics of visibility within photography that was used to capture the problematic past of Australia. Coloniality fuels the power imbalance between the photographer and photographed, or the colonizer and colonized, which has consequently embedded racist ideologies and distorted modes of seeing.¹ Australian contemporary artists Brook Andrew (Wiradjuru and Ngunnawal peoples) and Christian Thompson (Bidjara peoples) seek to decolonise the camera, confronting photography’s colonial past and its ongoing cultural legacies. They refuse to let this history remain unexamined or unchallenged within the medium.² These images are more than just chemical traces of light on a surface—they are evidence of colonial control and Indigenous resilience. Rather than directly re-presenting ethnographic imagery evident within Andrew’s 1998 appropriated Ngajuu Ngaay Nginduurgir (I see you) (fig. 1) that evokes ethical witnessing, Thompson chooses to use the history of photographic representation of Indigenous people as a starting point for spiritual repatriation within Down Under World (fig. 2) and Danger Will Come (fig. 3), two works part of the 2012 series ‘We Bury Our Own.’ While their material approaches differ, both artists access colonial archives—the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and the Pitt Rivers Museum—to uncover and share Australia’s diverse hidden histories. Through their manipulation of traditional photographic processes, they actively contribute to truth-telling.

Brook Andrew and Christian Thompson directly engage with the contested cultural site of the archive—a space that forms national identity—to assert their own vision of the past excluded from Australia’s historical narrative. Brook Andrew recognises the power of the ethnographic image to obscure frontier violence. In Ngajuu Ngaay Nginduurgirr, Andrew appropriates a late nineteenth or early twentieth-century photograph of an Anaiwan or Kamilaroi man from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies archive, confronting the ways these images have historically been used to mystify and distort the truth.³ This ambiguous identification confronts periods of forgetfulness by non-Indigenous Australians of cultural atrocities, as the retrieval of the past reproduced in the present resists such amnesia.⁴ Created in 1998, Andrew’s work offers a contemporary critique of the History Wars—an ideological conflict over Australia’s national identity. During this period, conservative Prime Minister John Howard oversaw a polarisation of mainstream views in Australian media and politics, which ultimately influenced public opinion.⁵ In response to this repression of the colonial consciousness, Andrew exposes the indexical quality of photography as a “carnal medium” that provides evidence of bodily trauma formed by the invisibility of Terra Nullius.⁶

In contrast, Christian Thompson subverts this method of appropriation within Down Under World and Danger Will Come by spending significant time with the Pitt Rivers Museum’s historic photographic collection to absorb their aura and create new bodies of work that invert the scientific scrutiny of ethnographic portraiture. Framed by Social Darwinism, colonial research—not limited to the Pitt Rivers Museum—promoted primitive stereotypes and predicted the extinction of Indigenous cultures.⁷ Thompson thwarts these ignorant assumptions by taking agency and directing the camera to capture himself in the twenty-first century. As one of the first two Aboriginal students to study at the University of Oxford, Thompson undertakes research on autoethnography, which was born from a crisis in representation.⁸ The self becomes the dominant voice, blending ethnography and autobiography, as Thompson wears the Oxford academic dress that provided him access to the Museum’s archive. This symbolically transfers power away from the cultural institutions of Western knowledge to Thompson himself as a researcher from the vantage point of the colonized.⁹ Indigenous representation no longer needs to be defined through the lens of colonialism.

The two artists’ collective manipulation of the scale of their artworks makes further apparent the power imbalance between photographer and photographed that distorts Indigenous representation and historical narratives. Ngajuu Ngaay Nginduurgirr, which spans two meters across, and the two artworks from the We Bury Our Own Series, uniformly measuring one-by-one meter, break with the past consumption of photographs as palm-sized postcards.¹⁰ Due to the development of cartes-de-visite in 1854, the reproducibility and transportability of small paper-based photographs worldwide became cheaper and quicker to create.¹¹ Thus, the camera’s ability to facilitate simultaneous viewing from different locations and its transnational dissemination sought to express the empire’s unlimited power over its colonized population.¹² In subversion, Andrew and Thompson’s larger rescaling arrests the viewer in a different bodily relationship. Viewers are denied the former privilege of claiming ownership over imagery and are no longer able to partake in the commodification and objectification of Indigenous people. These small images that once visually signified Indigenous inferiority, now champion equivalence as these artworks meet viewers face-to-face when mounted. By eliminating the physical mobility of ethnographic photographs that fed a disengaged omniscient eye, both artworks require corporeal engagement.¹³ The changed proportions shift the emphasis of mobility towards the photographer behind the lens, the subject in front of the camera, and the person viewing the photographic print. However, there is an irony in the National Gallery of Victoria reproducing Andrew’s appropriated photograph as a postcard for purchase. This suggests that commercial goals sometimes overshadow anti-colonial objectives and that colonial structures and biases continue to be embedded in contemporary practices, even if unconsciously.¹⁴  

This alteration to traditional modes of viewing through the enlargement of scale ultimately disrupts the colonial gaze projected onto the Other. Andrew exploits this technique to encourage ethical witnessing, which contrasts with Thompson’s motivation for spiritual repatriation. The gaze as a visual act generates modes of power since the gaze of the superior is specifically directed toward the oppressed.¹⁵ Therefore, Andrew’s cropping of the appropriated photograph to display only the Indigenous man’s eyes denies the position of a detached witness. Following Levinas’ line of reasoning that “the more I face my responsibilities the more I am responsible, ” the viewer is brought into a more intimate relationship with the subject, eye to eye, implicating them within the ongoing effects of colonization.¹⁶ By removing all signifiers of otherness, Andrew recognises that the national imagination of what constitutes Indigenous representation is fuelled by stereotypes and instead highlights commonalities.¹⁷ Within this ethical witnessing, viewers can no longer participate in the denial of past wrongs but instead are spurred to feel accountability and the desire to amend past injustices due to the subsequent confrontation. In contrast to this approach of cropping, the colonial gaze is absent within Down Under World as Thompson covers his eyes with stones to deny the possibility of being seen and to see those who have oppressed. Thompson looks within to uncover cultural truths. These stones that block the gaze are symbolic of Thompson entering the subconscious so that the photographs of the archive can no longer steal the souls of Indigenous subjects.¹⁸ Representative of healing qualities, the physical contact of the stones with Thompson’s body enables him to become a conduit that channels the spiritual world into the corporeal.¹⁹ Rather than repeating spectacles of the past, Thompson performs a private ceremony beyond visual statements to spiritually repatriate his ancestors and awaken their knowledge within contemporary discourse.²⁰ This is a process that invites audiences to live their story rather than acting as participants.

This interrogation of the colonial gaze is pushed to its limit as Andrew and Thompson’s three-dimensional manipulation of photography makes the viewer simultaneously act as the seer and seen upon closer inspection. Andrew’s installation of Ngajuu Ngaay Nginduurgirr is positioned in front of mounted neon text and suspended in the open air, inviting audiences to enter the space of his artwork. Upon entering, viewers participate in an interchange of gazes. They look at the subject’s harrowing eyes and are looked at themselves from a multitude of angles due to the photograph’s transparency. The multistable photograph functions as a device for self-knowledge since the multiple viewing positions produce an in-between space occupied by the gaze, literally in the gap between image and text.²¹ The hybrid space created during colonial encounters generates new meanings for mimicry, a concept introduced by Homi Bhabha.²² In this context, mimicry refers to the way the colonized adopt and adapt the behaviours, language, or culture of the colonizer. However, this imitation is not a perfect replication; instead, it is ambivalent, simultaneously resembling and subverting the colonizer’s authority. The embodied experience of mimicry underscores both the colonizer’s power, as the one who imposes the norms, and the resistance of the colonized, who uses imitation to reveal the inherent instability of colonial dominance. By breaking with the fixity of a single perspective innate to ethnographic portraiture, Andrew draws viewers into a more empathetic relationship of greater awareness.

Thompson also produces an immersive experience through the three-dimensional manipulation of depth within his photograph Danger Will Come, an image also created in response to the Pitt Rivers Museum archive. Thompson holds up an illuminated frame that directly contrasts with the black background. This enables the frame to project forward in space, unsettling the viewer expecting a reflected portrait of Thompson or themselves. According to psychologist Jacques Lacan, the gaze develops during the mirror stage as a child realises they are a visible being. This creates a state of anxiety as the person becomes objectified, realising that someone is watching over them.²³ Defying this logic, a face is not shown within Danger Will Come—rather, the viewer encounters the shimmering quality of moving water. The alignment of identity to a state of constant flux conceptualises the idea that the self is always changing and dependent on an individual’s surroundings.²⁴ Thus, Thompson’s uncanny photograph challenges viewers to understand the implication of their gaze and how it holds the potential to determine otherness. Both artists suggest that the only way to reconcile Australia’s fragmented historical narrative is through a greater awareness of the gaze itself and its consequences.

Upon this journey of truth-telling, Andrew and Thompson continue to collectively expose Australia’s problematic historical record by altering the traditional photographic processes of lighting and colour. Light and darkness as a physical and metaphorical force play a central role in connecting racial differences with the exploitation of photography.²⁵ The metaphor of light informing photography and Australia’s narrative is part of a larger system of hierarchised binary inherent to colonial discourse. This difference is rooted in the concept that whiteness and light connote truth, knowledge, and purity whereas blackness and darkness connote mystery, ignorance, and regression.²⁶ Andrew dismantles this oppressive binary that has rendered Indigenous people silent by including neon text in Wiradjuri, the language of his ancestors. The neon words Ngajuu Ngaay Nginduurgirr—which translates to “I see you”—pull the appropriated photograph from the dark into the light. As Andrew remarked, “The idea is hidden but not confined, people can stomach the message in neon.”²⁷ The artificial light, representative of a capitalist culture mesmerised by the spectacle and drawn in by advertising, is manipulated by Andrew to create another means of visual recognition. Andrew appeals to the “great Australian silence” in which a concerning number of non-Indigenous people chose not to think about past atrocities.²⁸ Despite this silencing, the neon Wiradjuri words hold contemporary dynamism in this context, illuminating the photographed eyes to demonstrate the resilience of Indigenous culture prevailing through policies of assimilation.²⁹ Thomspon also utilises photo technologies to break down the oppressive hierarchy of light and darkness innate to ethnographic photography and therefore Australia’s construction of history. Within both Down Under World and Danger Will Come, Thompson digitally enhances specific colours within each photograph. Amethyst stones and the floral framing of the mirror held up by Thompson are restored to their natural iridescent colours. This enhancement dramatically contrasts with the monochrome palette Thompson has chosen for the rest of the photograph’s composition. This intentional editing suggests that racist ideologies underpinning the use of light and darkness in ethnographic portraiture are ever present as colonial structures continue to purpurate such binaries.³⁰ Colour within photography cannot be completely restored until reconciliation has taken place.  

This manipulation of material processes translates further into the meta-temporal quality of the printed photographs that mirror the lasting impact of the archive within the present that continues to shape the future. Situating the archive only within the past and as memory is problematic for constructing a truthful narration of Australia’s history.³¹ This distancing disregards the intergenerational trauma of colonization that disrupted an entire value system and rendered Indigenous peoples subordinate to higher powers and photographers carrying out injustices for the sake of record keeping.³² Thus, the transparent perspex surface of Ngajuu Ngaay Nginduurgirr’s appropriated photograph ultimately makes the ethnographic purpose of the archive transparent. The archive is more than just a collection of material, but an imperial simulation of history-making. Its colonial origins are made visible and the perspex material’s durability ensures that future audiences can continue uncovering this truth without fears of damaging the fragility of paper-based photographs. Similar to Andrew, Thompson also considers the finish of his We Bury Our Own series, printed upon Fuji pearl metallic paper, to reflect the infinite impact the archive has upon present and future Indigenous individuals. The metallic surface of the photograph flares in the light, rendering the artwork’s subtle appearance and disappearance dependent on the viewer’s movements and proximity. For Indigenous people, the past is understood to form part of a cyclical order known as the everywhen.³³ Time is not recorded chronologically but is instead experienced through active engagement with the natural world and ancestral connections to the land. Therefore, the material property of metallic affirms the continued existence of Indigenous peoples despite their ambivalent relationship with mainstream Australia.³⁴ Indigenous identities can never be erased from history for they are keepers of what has been, what is, and what will be. 

Despite differences in material practice, Brook Andrew and Christian Thompson seek to effectively decolonise the camera by recognising and disrupting ingrained racist ideologies that have tainted modern photography since its inception in 1839. Andrew’s photographic installation Ngajuu Ngaay Nginduugirr’s and Thompson’s photographic series We Bury Our Own showcasing Down Under World and Danger Will Come, challenge the binaries inherent to colonial archives and that of Australia’s historical narrative. The camera no longer exerts colonial control—instead, both artists manipulate the lens to magnify Indigenous identity crucial to the past, present, and future history of Australia.

Endnotes

1. Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 2-3. ↩︎
2. Mark Sealy, Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time, (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2019), 15.  ↩︎
3. Jane Lyndon, The Flash of Recognition: Photography and the Emergence of Indigenous Rights, (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2013), 25. ↩︎
4. Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’’ in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory A Reader. Patrick Williams, and Laura Chrisman, (Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), 200.  ↩︎
5. Andrew Peterson, “Different Battlegrounds, Similar Concerns? The ‘History Wars’ and the Teaching of History in Australia and England.” Compare 46, no. 6 (2016): 863, https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2015.1049978. ↩︎
6. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, (London: Vintage, 1981), 28. ↩︎
7. Ian Donaldson and Tamsin Donaldson, Seeing the First Australians, (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1985), 55.  ↩︎
8. Jennifer Housten, “Indigenous Autoethnography: Formulating Our Knowledge, Our Way.” The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 36, no. S1 (2007): 45–46, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1326011100004695. ↩︎
9. Linda Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, (London: Zed Books, 2021), 56.  ↩︎
10. Wendy Garden, “Ethical Witnessing and the Portrait Photograph: Brook Andrew.” Journal of Australian Studies 35, no. 2 (2011): 256, https://doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2011.562231. ↩︎
11. Elizabeth Anne McCauley, Disde ́ri and the Carte de Visite Portrait Photograph, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 61. ↩︎
12. Johnathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 39-40. ↩︎
13. Donna Haraway, “Introduction: The Persistence of Vision.” In Primate Visions, (United Kingdom: Routledge, 1990), 10. ↩︎
14. Wendy Garden, “Ethical Witnessing and the Portrait Photograph,” 236.  ↩︎
15. Sitah Al-Qahtani, “The Photographic Gaze: Cultural Displacement and Identity Crisis.” The Midwest Quarterly (Pittsburg) 62, no. 3 (2021): 274-75, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A663880845/AONE?u=usyd&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=8da78e7f. ↩︎
16. Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other, (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987), 45.  ↩︎
17. Michael Griffiths, “The White Gaze and Its Artifacts: Governmental Belonging and Non-Indigenous Evaluation in a (Post)-Settler Colony.” Postcolonial Studies 15, no. 4 (2012): 416-17, https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2013.777993. ↩︎
18. Zoe Strother, “A Photograph Steals the Soul: The History of an Idea” In Portraiture and Photography in Africa, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 179.  ↩︎
19. Christopher Morton, “The Ancestral Image in the Present Tense.” Photographies 8, no. 3 (2015): 263. https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2015.1106419. ↩︎
20. Marina Warner, “Magical Aesthetics” in Christian Thompson: Ritual Intimacy, (Melbourne: Monash University Museum of Art, 2017), 71.  ↩︎
21. Kate MacNeill, “Undoing the Colonial Gaze: Ambiguity in the Art of Brook Andrew.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 6/7, no. 2/1 (2006): 184, https://doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2006.11432769.   ↩︎
22. Homi K, Bhabha, The Location of Culture, (London: Routledge, 2004), 122.  ↩︎
23. Licitra Rosa, Carmelo, Carla Antonucci, Alberto Siracusano, and Diego Centonze, “From the Imaginary to Theory of the Gaze in Lacan.” Frontiers in Psychology 12 (2021): 2, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.578277.  ↩︎
24. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” 205. ↩︎
25. Melissa Miles, “Out of the Shadows: On Light, Darkness and Race in Australian Photography.” History of Photography 36, no. 3 (2012): 340, https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2012.685357. ↩︎
26. Melissa Miles The Burning Mirror: Photography in an Ambivalent Light, (South Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Press, 2008), 25.  ↩︎
27. Anne Loxley, ‘‘The Battles Continue: Brook Andrew’’, in Colour Power Aboriginal Art Post-1984 in the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2004), 143.  ↩︎
28. Ashley Barnwell, “Keeping the Nation’s Secrets: ‘Colonial Storytelling’ within Australian Families.” Journal of Family History 46, no. 1 (2021): 48, https://doi.org/10.1177/0363199020966920. ↩︎
29. Ian MacLean, “Aboriginal art and the artworld” In How Aborigines invented the idea of contemporary art: writings on Aboriginal contemporary art, (Sydney: Institute of Modern Art and Power Publications, 2011), 20. ↩︎
30. Iva Mencevska, “Truth Telling in Australia’s Historical Narrative”. Emerging Scholars in Australian Indigenous Studies 5, no.1 (2020): 1, https://doi.org/10.5130/nesais.v5i1.1552.  ↩︎
31. Christopher Pinney, “What Time Is the Visual? Photography and the History of the Future.” Visual Anthropology Review 39, no. 1 (2023): 24-25, https://doi.org/10.1111/var.12288. ↩︎
32. Jennifer Housten, “Indigenous Autoethnography: Formulating Our Knowledge, Our Way.” 49–50.  ↩︎
33. Stephen Gilchrist, Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia, (Cambridge: Harvard Art Museums, 2016), 5.  ↩︎
34. Chris Healy, Forgetting the Aborigines, (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2008), 63.  ↩︎

About the Author

Maeve Sullivan is a second-year Bachelor of Arts student at the University of Sydney, majoring in Art History and English Literature. As an emerging artist, academic, and advocate, she is committed to exploring the broader role of art in raising awareness and advancing decolonising methodologies. Recently, she participated in the Digital Young Writer’s Residency at the National Gallery of Australia.