Indigenous Art, Culture and Design: Ricky Maynard

Broken Heart 2005 silver gelatin print 43 x 41.5 cm

In My first post about this subject I wish to talk about an image that struck me in the lecture where we watched part of the ABC documentary written and presented by Hettie Perkins, Art + Soul. This is an image by documentary photographer Ricky Maynard called 'Broken Heart', from the collection 'Portrait of a Distant Land', which depicts the artist himself looking across the water to the his homeland. Here he is honouring his ancestors who were banished from Tasmania by white settlers to surrounding islands. Researching further into this history I learnt how the settlers had attempted genocide on the Indigenous Australians and when they tried to defend their land they were subject to violence, and were eventually forced from their homeland. This picture really stood out for me, as you can feel the sense of a tragic past that he is looking back on.
The collection is made up of 10 images that celebrate the history of Aboriginal Tasmanians, from an Aboriginal perspective. He aims to tell the stories of his people from their perspective, and in doing so reclaim Aboriginal history from the European point of view, which we so often hear about.

I have included a few more images from the collection I liked.