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The_Photograph_as_Archive_Reimagining_th
The_Photograph_as_Archive_Reimagining_th
Electronic version
URL: https://journals.openedition.org/anthrovision/6647
DOI: 10.4000/anthrovision.6647
ISSN: 2198-6754
Publisher
VANEASA - Visual Anthropology Network of European Association of Social Anthropologists
Electronic reference
Sabra Thorner and Maree Clarke, “The Photograph as Archive, Reimagining the Archive, the Living
Archive of Aboriginal Art ”, Anthrovision [Online], Vol. 8.2 | 2020, Online since 31 August 2022,
connection on 23 September 2022. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/anthrovision/6647 ; DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4000/anthrovision.6647
We acknowledge the traditional owners of the unceded land where we (have) live(d) and where
this work is embedded: Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations in and around
Naarm (Melbourne, Australia). We pay respect to Elders past, present, and emerging.
Sabra Thorner: I thank my co-author, Maree, for her generosity, always. I also thank – in
addition to the institutions and individuals named in the text that follows – Gerard Hayes,
Melinda Hinkson, Vicki Couzens, Jessa Rogers, Kimberley Moulton, Anna Weinreich, Kristin
Dowell, Robin Nagle, and Lynn Morgan for their insights and support of this collaborative work. I
also thank Paolo Favero, Janine Prins, and Beate Engelbrecht for their engagement with our
thinking and experimentation with this form; and two anonymous reviewers for their
thoughtfulness in making our written work stronger.
Maree Clarke: I acknowledge my dear friend and soulmate, the late Len Tregonning, for his
kindness and generosity in passing on his deep cultural knowledge – he is truly missed. I also
acknowledge the traditional peoples of the land of the Kulin Nations, on which I live and
work, along with my Ancestors, whose knowledge of this land continues to inspire me daily in
my art practice. I thank Vivien Anderson and Amy Boyd from Vivien Anderson Gallery for their
support in representing me and in promoting my artwork to a broader public. I acknowledge the
many friends and family (including my co-author Sabra) who continue to support my art
practice, especially as we work together to create new art. I also acknowledge my nieces
and nephews and all the young people with whom I continue to have the great pleasure to
work and whose enthusiasm for embracing the knowledge and practice of our Elders and
Ancestors indicates a willingness to learn and to adapt our cultural knowledge in the 21st
century. These new and dynamic expressions of culture continue to demonstrate our resilience
as First Nations peoples and in keeping culture strong for future generations.
Introduction
1 In 2008, an Aboriginal Australian artist based in Melbourne, Australia – Maree Clarke
(Mutti Mutti / Wemba Wemba / Boonwurrung) – created a kangaroo-teeth necklace,
revivifying an art and cultural practice for the first time in over a century. She was
inspired to do so after viewing an 1880 photograph of an ancestor – Yarruun Parpur
Tarneen – wearing such adornment. She studied the two extant examples held in the
Melbourne Museum (and later, in major collections around the world). She’d been
yearning to make such a necklace for over 15 years, when she got the chance to do so
through a commission from that same state museum.
2 This photo-essay is premised upon the assertion that photographs are archives
themselves; and we suggest that this understanding urges reimagination of what
archives are and can do. Archives have become important sites of scholarly inquiry over
the last 20+ years (Derrida 1998; Stoler 2010; Christen and Anderson 2019; Thorpe 2019).
No longer taken for granted, archives are now actively investigated as cultures,
institutions, and/or technologies with their own logics (that can then be resisted,
responded to, and reimagined). In our work together, the archive is not a repository
where information is retrieved, but rather a site of knowledge production; the archive
is a metaphor for the traces, fragments, and materials that can be creatively
(re)assembled and (re)invigorated in new contexts of collaborative co-production
(Christie et al 2014).
3 In Australia, photographs have been widely and successfully mobilized as historical
artifacts, reproduced in various media and taken up in multiple trajectories of
knowledge production about Aboriginal people (Lydon 2005; Lydon 2015). Photographs
index social relations of the past that are themselves indicative of complex contact
histories (Thorner 2019). Yet photographs also hold cultural knowledge which inspires
art- and culture-making in the present. Their replicability is an important site of
experimentation and innovation – photographs can be reprinted, diversely circulated,
and infinitely recoded (Edwards 2001); and encounters/moments in time can be re-
embodied and re-enacted (Thorner 2019).
This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http://
4 journals.openedition.org/anthrovision/6647
6 Maree and I are part of a team of collaborators on a project called “The Living Archive
of Aboriginal Art” based in Melbourne (see Edmonds et al 2020). This project seeks to
radically reimagine archives from an Indigenous perspective – including the holistic
integration of personhood, Ancestors, Country, kin, and cultural production;
incorporating archival objects and contemporary artworks; foregrounding Indigenous
expressions yet reflexively considering how these are often intercultural
collaborations; capitalizing on new/digital technologies while also (re)activating
traditional (and pre-colonial) forms; and emphasizing that archives are always
dynamic, emergent, and in-the-making.1
7 In many ways, this photo-essay is part of the same work, one venue in which we are
engaging still photographs in ways that seek to honor collaborative co-production.
Photographs are material objects (even as they have shifted, in many cases, from print to
pixel), and they are things bearing affective storytelling potential, waiting to be activated,
taken up, re-imagined, re-enacted. How could we mobilize photographs for the stories
they hold? What are the ethical responsibilities and/or imperatives of showing,
looking, storytelling (and what comes after)? Via the photographs here, we are telling
stories (see more in the next section, below) and pointing towards the possibilities for
more/different stories to be told; we are also asserting that the storytelling emerging
from photographs is a valid and significant form of Indigenous knowledge transmission
(Archibald et al 2019).
8 All photographs here, together with the fragments of speech and text, the layering and
pacing of different 2-D rectangles in each frame, are employed with Maree’s
participation, consent, and enthusiasm. This is a form that lends itself to
methodological innovation in anthropology, a decolonizing practice that is both
collaborative and reflexive in its attempt to produce and disseminate knowledge. Can
the photo-essay do something different (than either a film or a text)? 2 How might it be
a research methodology as well as a research-product?3 We think it offers a greater
sense of being-there than conventional academic texts, an opportunity to explore, see,
visit-with the processes of knowledge-making.4
9 Assembling these images is part of our ongoing work together, as research (Sabra) and
art-making (Maree) interanimate each other (Geertz 1996). The photo-essay both
represents our work and invites others in, to contemplate, imagine, re-assemble, and
create.5 Inviting others in is a key methodology of Maree’s practice (as we’ve written
elsewhere; see Thorner et al 2018, Thorner et al 2019); her creative work is
collaborative, relational, dynamic, and enables new modes of research to emerge.
10 Making the photo-essay felt more akin to filmmaking than to writing: we found
ourselves thinking about sequencing, pacing, composition (also: color, framing,
cropping), how it looked. We were striving for multivocality – not wanting to be too
directive about the meaning of particular images – and paying careful attention to who
had (or should have) the power to say what, and with what emphasis. We sought to
produce movement (a story unfolding), ease transitions, and yet tell a story visually.
Indeed, as we discuss in the next section, we wanted to tell a story with many stories
embedded within it. We relied on collage, assemblage, and layering; we imagined our
work in terms of foreshadow and flashback; we used repetition (and/or timing) for
emphasis. We tried to stay away from linearity and tried to communicate, visually, in a
way that might feel more circular, cyclical, or spiral-like.
11 What are image ethics (Peterson 2003) here? Copyright is a legal framework that has
proven inadequate in protecting Indigenous interests (Anderson 2018). In Australia,
each institution has developed its own protocols and processes for researchers (and
others) seeking culturally-correct image permissions. Is the permission of an owning/
collecting institution sufficient? What right do institutions (such as museums) have to
gatekeep, and/or to profit from images including Indigenous peoples and their objects?
If negotiation is a condition of access, then how/with whom to negotiate? Kim Christen
and Jane Anderson (2019) have developed “traditional knowledge licenses and labels”
as part of their “Local Contexts” project: these are (legal, extra-legal, and educational)
tools designed to help Indigenous peoples manage their own intellectual property and
cultural heritage, specifically within digital ecosystems. Their idea is to forge a new
paradigm of rights and responsibilities that recognizes the inherent sovereignty that
Indigenous peoples/communities have over their images, objects, and heritage. 6
12 There is a tension between the ease with which digital and digitized photographs can
be shared and circulated (on one hand), and (on the other hand) the recognition of
Indigenous peoples’ rights to their images, their photographic objects, and the
knowledge embedded within them. “Open-access” may be a completely incompatible
approach, and one that ignores the dispossessing histories Indigenous Australians have
endured and the ongoing struggles for legitimacy and visibility. Following Christen and
Anderson’s work, we ask: are there ways to facilitate ethical access? Might alternative
pathways of access allow people to acknowledge the weight of the histories of image-
making and knowledge-circulating of Indigenous peoples, and to understand that they
must have a say in how their cultural heritage circulates (even if/as the cultures of the
worldwide web impose opposite pressures)?
13 We don’t offer up definitive answers, but rather pose these questions for further
critical reflection. We have striven to honor the histories and legacies of image-making
and image-circulating of Indigenous peoples in seeking correct cultural permissions
from all who might hold responsibility for an image and the Ancestor(s) and/or
Country it pictures. All photographs included here are done so with the enthusiasm,
consent, and generosity of Maree Clarke, and many of them come from her private
collections. We acknowledge Fran Edmonds as the senior researcher and coordinator of
the Living Archive project. We thank the Koorie Heritage Trust (Gail Harradine,
Rebecca Mirams, and formerly, Nerissa Broben and Miriam Troon) and photographer
Graham Baring; Museum Victoria (Melanie Raberts and formerly, Lindy Allen) and
photographers Jon Augier and Benjamin Healley; the Camperdown and District
Historical Society (Bob Lambell) and Sue Cole; Ros Britton (Gunditjmara Aboriginal
Cooperative) and Jan Critchett; and the State Library of Victoria (Maxine Briggs and
Titta Secombe). Each photograph required a unique trajectory for seeking and
obtaining permission(s); overall, the process demanded trust, humility, patience,
persistence, creativity, and reflexivity. The labor and the time are important to
acknowledge, but more important is relating to each other in a good, right way. In
other words, engaging with photographs can never be simply about using,
contextualizing, or circulating the photographic object, but rather, must always
recognize that photographs are inextricable from their peoples and their relations, our
relationality.7
Concluding Thoughts
21 At the conclusion of the photo-essay is a vibrant photograph of Maree Clarke. In this
photograph, Maree forges an embodied relationship with Yarruun via a reproduction of
the c1880 photographic encounter in 2013. In re-enacting the image, Maree is
establishing herself as responsible for bearing, demonstrating, and extending
southeastern Australian ways of knowing, being, and doing things (Martin and
Mirraboopa 2003) in the present; she’s also insisting on the living legacies of her
ancestor. This dynamic photograph infuses the possibility of joy, openness, and
sharing, into the photographic encounter.12 Said another way: the materials and
technologies of photography that have been mobilized to produce Aboriginality in the
past can certainly be taken up, generations later, to produce Aboriginality in the
present (and under different auspices). The photograph is collaborative, performative,
archiving the present for the benefit of the future.
22 Finally: how might we mobilize photographs for the stories they hold? What are the
ethical imperatives of looking? How might the photo-essay advance our thinking in
anthropology, and more broadly in approaching cross-cultural encounters with
thoughtfulness and understanding? How does it offer new possibilities of intercultural
co-production? Thinking about photographs as archives – they can be evidence of the
past; they can also be made anew with an eye towards the future – is a way to
understand them as impetus for further collaborative and decolonizing action.
23 Books and articles
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Films
Mahoney, Mitch. 2021. “Black Wattle Resin and Ochre Paint.” Short film available at: https://
vimeo.com/487092946/f96eed57a6. 7:51 mins.
Rose, Simon, dir. 2018. Cultural Activist – Maree Clarke. Producer: Richard Jameson. 13 mins.
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Living Archive of Aboriginal Art Living Archive of Aboriginal Art online exhibition
(unimelb.edu.au) (accessed June 27, 2022).
NOTES
1. Early outcomes of the Living Archive project have included this website: https://
omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/livingarchivenaidoc/?fbclid=IwAR3qYyXQHTn92nduprf_yPC-
jGm0gfoya0G_XbNyAFQ0fD5G19ySZ0cs3qE and this Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/
LivingArchiveofAboriginalArtandKnowledge, both inviting community contributions of
storytelling to animate photographs from Maree Clarke’s extensive visual archive.
ABSTRACTS
In 2008, an Indigenous Australian artist based in Melbourne – Maree Clarke (Mutti Mutti/ Wemba
Wemba/Boonwurrung) – created a kangaroo-teeth necklace, revivifying an art and cultural
practice for the first time in over a century. She was inspired to do so after viewing an 1880
photograph of an ancestor – Yarruun Parpur Tarneen – wearing such adornment, and by visiting
with extant examples of such adornment in museums around the world. This photo-essay seeks
to both represent Clarke’s collaborative work, and invite others in to learn, share, and co-create.
We argue that photographs are archives themselves: sites and sources of creative co-production.
Photographs are inextricable from their people and their relations (with Ancestors, Country, kin,
and community). The holistic integration of Indigenous knowledge transmission, contemporary
art-making, archival photographs, and extant artifacts offers a radical re-imagination of what
archives are and can do.
En 2008, une artiste australienne indigène basée à Melbourne - Maree Clarke (Mutti Mutti/
Wemba Wemba/Boonwurrung) - a créé un collier en dents de kangourou, faisant ainsi renaître,
pour la première fois depuis plus d'un siècle, une pratique artistique et culturelle. Elle a eu l'idée
de le faire après avoir vu une photographie de 1880 d'un ancêtre - Yarruun Parpur Tarneen -
portant une telle parure, et après avoir découvert dans des musées du monde entie des exemples
de cette parure . Ce photo-essai cherche à la fois à représenter le travail de collaboration de
Clarke et à inviter d'autres personnes à apprendre, à partager et à co-créer. Nous soutenons que
les photographies sont elles-mêmes des archives: des sites et des sources de coproduction
créative. Les photographies sont indissociables de leur population et de leurs relations avec les
ancêtres, le pays, la parenté et la communauté. L'intégration holistique de la transmission du
savoir indigène, de la création artistique contemporaine, des photographies d'archives et des
artefacts existants offrent une réimagination radicale de ce que sont et peuvent être les archives.
En 2008, una artista indígena australiana afincada en Melbourne, Maree Clarke (Mutti Mutti/
Wemba Wemba/Boonwurrung), creó un collar de dientes de canguro, reviviendo una práctica
artística y cultural por primera vez en más de un siglo. Se inspiró para tal creación en una
fotografía de 1880 de un antepasado, Yarruun Parpur Tarneen, que llevaba ese adorno, y en una
visita a los ejemplares existentes de ese adorno en museos de todo el mundo. Este fotoensayo
pretende representar el trabajo de colaboración de Clarke e invitar a otros a aprender, compartir
y co-crear. Sostenemos que las fotografías son archivos en sí mismas: lugares y fuentes de
coproducción creativa. Las fotografías son inextricables de su gente y sus relaciones (con los
ancestros, el país, los parientes y la comunidad). La integración holística de la transmisión del
conocimiento indígena, la creación artística contemporánea, las fotografías de archivo y los
artefactos existentes ofrecen la posibilidad de reimaginar radicalmente lo que son y pueden
hacer los archivos.
INDEX
Mots-clés: Aborigènes d’Australie, photographies, archive vivante, art contemporain, recherche
décolonisée, musée
Keywords: Indigenous Australia, photographs, living archive, contemporary art, decolonizing
research, museum
Palabras claves: Indígenas Australianos, fotografías, archivo vivo, arte contemporáneo,
investigación descolonial, museo
AUTHORS
SABRA THORNER
Mount Holyoke College
sthorner@mtholyoke.edu
MAREE CLARKE
Artist/Curator/Art Consultant, Represented by Vivien Anderson Gallery
maree.clarke25@gmail.com