#mervyn bishop

[colonellickburger]

Mervyn Bishop. Aboriginal photographer, self-portrait. Sydney, 1989

[swanlake1998]

roslyn watson photographed by mervyn bishop

[othersociologist]

Mervyn Bishop, a Murray man, was the first Aboriginal person to work at a major metro daily newspaper, joining the Sydney Morning Herald in 1962. In 1971 he was named Australian Press Photographer of the Year. He would go on to cover major events, including the anti-war protests of the 1960s, the Bicentennial in 1988, and Aboriginal community life in remote regions of Australia. He was also a photography lecturer at the University of Sydney, a film photographer, and he held his first retrospective solo show in the 1990s. His work was featured at the Art Galley of New South Wales as part of NAIDOC Week, a commemoration of the resilience, culture and achievements of Aborginal and Torres Strait Islander people. 

The Other Sociologist.

[jp2bondage]

from catalogue In Dreams: Mervyn Bishop - Thirty Years Of Photography 1960-1990, The Australian Centre for Photography, 1991.

[selfportraitsofcolor]

Mervyn Bishop Is There An Aboriginal Photography Australia (1989) [Source]

The Age says:

"Mervyn is called 'the godfather of Australian indigenous photography', and that indicates how central he is," says Jane Scott, director of Monash Gallery and curator of a stunning exhibition, New View: Indigenous Photographic Perspectives. "But he's not just a champion of indigenous photography, he's a champion of Australian photography."

Bishop is someone who sees plenty but says little, appropriate traits for a photographer. He is low-key, soft-spoken, neat, peering through glasses or squinting through the viewfinder, always framing the reality that swirls around him. He grew up in the outback outpost of Brewarrina, where his career options were limited.

"My Dad was a shearer and then a shearers' cook and he said, 'there's nothing here for you mate, you're not big-framed, if you start shearing your back will break down like mine'," Bishop recalls. "That was all I had to aspire to, unless I was lucky and got work on the local council or in a shop. In those days there wasn't much mainstream employment for Aboriginal people."

Bishop had talent, luck, and a skill. He had messed around with his mother's folding camera. He wanted to take photos. He applied for a cadetship at the Sydney Morning Herald and was accepted, to his amazement. "It was hard to get a cadetship unless you were white, blond-haired and blue-eyed, but I was given the opportunity and ran with it."

He arrived in the big city in 1963. Not only was he ineligible for full citizenship at that time, but his employers were not obliged to pay him the same wage as a non-indigenous worker. As the first Aboriginal person working on a metropolitan daily (and the first Aboriginal professional photographer), this "non-Australian" began capturing the life around him.

[black-australia]

On 26 August 1975, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam handed a leasehold title to land at Daguragu (Wattle Creek) to Vincent Lingiari, representative of the Gurindji people. It was a turning point for Aboriginal land rights in Australia.

Photo courtesy of Mervyn Bishop

[sgrhall]

Cold Eels and Distant Thoughts (Curated Group Exhibition) - Review

[I wrote this review on the 21st May 2012 and thought I'd post it here, just for the record. It was pretty cool to see this show of photographs by male Indigenous Artists portraying Indigenous Australian men.]

Cold Eels and Distant Thoughts now into it seventh iteration, was opened last month on the 14th of April at the Monash Gallery of Art in Wheelers Hill, Victoria. This exhibition has previously existed in both different forms and under different titles, as surfaced in different parts of Australia over the past decade.

This current show consists of the work of eight male Indigenous Artists who have contributed Photographic works portraying Indigenous Australian men. To my knowledge, ‘Aboriginal men photographing Aboriginal men’ has always been the base framework that guided its curation on each occasion by luminary Indigenous artist and curator Djon Mundine.

The artists forming this current exhibition are Dr Yanada Mckenzie, Jason Wing, Mervyn Bishop, Gary Lee, Ricky Maynard, Michael Aird, Adam Hill and the late Michael Riley.

Djon Mundine’s opening address helped make sense of the vast and varying portrayals Aboriginal men spread throughout the MGA’s expansive space. From the documentary style environmental portraits of Michael Aird to the intimate, revealing, Beauty, Vanity, and Narcissism series of Adam Hill, the show breaks stereotypes and seeks to give strength to Aboriginal male identity.

Mundine tells us that whilst all Aboriginal people have been challenged in various ways through colonisation, this particular collection of work addresses the more recent Federal Government Intervention and the, “blaming (of) males for every fault within Aboriginal society”.

Artist Jason Wing and his work A Government Initiative address the Intervention directly through two commissioned portraits of himself in a ‘paste up’ style, floor to ceiling installation. Side by side, we see Wing’s naked torso with breastplate like plaques, hung around his neck. Like the scale of these works, the adornments seen also reference the Interventionist signage at the entrance many Northern Territory communities. Wing in his artist talk said that he “wanted to make comment on the demonisation of men, and women; Aboriginal people and non Aboriginal people” and that the signs “indirectly label Aboriginal people as rapists” and the other labels of criminality the the Intervention seeks to address.

Wings arresting portraits are shown with the seemingly, Government sanctioned, labels of ‘ALCOHOLIC’ and ‘CRIMINAL’ adorning his frame. The gaze in each image seems to play on each label suggesting Wing playing out the label both he and other Aboriginal people have received. Unlike other showings of this work, these are greyscale (like the rest of the show) and that the grey skin tone is said to reference both his own, and perhaps a wider ambiguity of Aboriginality linked to appearance.

The rest of the works on show were as varied as the artists who made them. Adam Hill’s series was like Wing’s, considered and created with particular outcomes and intent in mind and also depicted his own likeness in the work. Contrasting this were Mervyn Bishop’s works that consisted of a range of portraits (My Father, My Brother) and what seemed to be particular favourites from his early photojournalism work including, the iconic Prime Minister Gough Whitlam pours soil into the hand of traditional landowner Vincent Lingari.

As Mundine said in his opening address,” Aboriginal people are everywhere and, do everything“; a broad ranging statement making comment on the diversity of Aboriginal culture and identity. I feel this too was shown in the work of the Artists, displaying breadth practice and the ethos of each practitioner. Pertinently, Mundine says in within the exhibition statement “... the central intention of this exhibition is to see Aboriginal men as just normal males with varying attributes, attitudes, fears and hopes and dreams for a better future.”

Cold Eels and Distant Thoughts: Monash Gallery of Art in Wheelers Hill, Victoria 30 March - 3 June 2012