Forgotten Faces

Captured: Early Brisbane Photographers & Their Aboriginal Subjects, reveals a little known and little recognised history of Brisbane, showcasing studio portraits of Queensland's Indigenous people from the late 1860s. Curator, photographer and anthropologist Michael Aird has been researching photos for nearly 30 years, building a historical, photographic record of Queensland's Indigenous population.

“There's a lot of photos floating around, a lot of photos appearing in different places with different information about the same photo,” Aird explains. “The aboriginal people fitted the market at that time; they were exotic and savage and the photographer would exaggerate that a bit, make them look as pitiful or as savage as the photographer could.”

Accumulating these photographs was not simply a matter of collection: politics, history, native title, ownership and familial connection all came into play. “There's these multiple layers of the politics of history. Some of these early photos, they were obviously dragged into the studio or coerced into the studio, told to take their clothes off and pose. Obviously they never got copies of the photos or had any control over it. There were very few aboriginals walking into studios as paying customers.”

These photographs inevitably raise questions: who were these people? Were they victims of exploitation? Do these photographs offer at least partially true representations of Brisbane's Indigenous people or are they, more simply, an important record that these people were here? “In some ways [Captured] doesn't tell you a lot. It doesn't tell you their names or where they came from or what their tribal group was, but it's a huge base of information to know: that they were in Brisbane at that time. That's one of the main points of the exhibition, for people to look back and see how many people were here at that time. That's a basic point, but that's something for people to take note of: that's a lot of aboriginal people.

“In some ways I think this exhibition will be a little bit threatening to some, both aboriginal and non-aboriginal. This is proof that there wasn't just one or two old fellas walking around with breast plates; there was a whole stack of people. I think the important thing is what's not being said. Who these people are, what tribe they came from, where they lived, how their connected and interrelated to each other; that's all not being said. That's really the message I want to get across; I want people to look at these pictures and start thinking and guessing. The main aim is for people to look at these people and look at the fact that there were so many of them in Brisbane CBD... The whole issue is that these people were here.”