Ricky Maynard and the politics of presence in photography
In an age where social documentary photography has been so heavily critiqued that it has become near impossible to speak meaningfully of truth and authenticity, Ricky Maynard’s extraordinary achievement in producing some of the most important photography projects of modern Australian history is all the more laudable. Several of Maynard’s bodies of work have already gained iconic status in Australian visual history. His series of portraits of Wik elders from Aurukun in Queensland, ‘Returning to the Places that Name Us’ (2000), is just one example. This series was made after the Howard Government’s 1998 Native Title Amendment Act effectively extinguished many of the rights granted to the Wik people in their successful High Court claim for the coexistence of native title and pastoral leases, and was produced with a respect for these people that contrasts sharply with this Act. ‘The Moonbird People’ (1985-88), which documents a Tasmanian Aboriginal community as they take part in the annual moonbird season, similarly offers a powerful account of people and their connection to place. However, it is not only the stories that Maynard’s photographs tell that are so crucial to our times. His approach to photography provides a way of rethinking the very possibilities of a politically and socially engaged practice today.
The critical implications of Maynard’s work are played out in striking detail in his ongoing series of black and white photographs ‘Portrait of a Distant Land’. This series documents various significant sites for Aboriginal people in Tasmania. At first glance, the photographs may seem more aligned to landscape traditions than to the history of social documentary, but such hasty assumptions are quickly dispelled. The series confronts the legacy of colonial policies in... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline