Narrating Photography

Alice Helme

A picture says a thousand words. We all know that ubiquitous and often overused phrase. It is the cornerstone of art analysis and an art historical approach to dissecting pictorial representations. An image presents a visual narrative, conveying a story or meaning through the silent channels of sight. These narratives are fabled to tell a truth, an unaltered vision of the artists’ projected thoughts, or convey a reality of time and place. Photographs have always been revered as a mode of truth telling, as opposed to paintings and other figurative art forms that are imagined from the mind of the artist. Their image captures a moment, and in that scene of suspended time the photographer presents exactly what they saw. We are presented with the perspective of the photographer, or their directed framing of a scene. The image speaks for itself, to use another popular idiom. But what happens when alongside the photograph or series of photographs there are captions and a specific order, all of which were placed and curated by the photographer themselves? Does the meaning alter? And if so, does it reveal a kind of commentary by the photographer? Is this added information then lost in the processes of digitisation and online viewing?

"Outcastes", India photograph album, 1926
“Outcastes”, India photograph album, 1926. University of Melbourne Archives, Una Porter album, 1997.0002.00003

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“Dom Types”

Charmaine Toh

"Dom types", photograph album, 1926
“Dom types”, photograph album, 1926. Una Porter collection, 1997.0002.00003, University of Melbourne Archives

Martyn Jolly has noted that photographic albums were both oral and visual records – their owners would show them to friends and family accompanied by an oral narrative.1 This oral element is of course now lost, but I raise it that we might recognize the importance of situating the individual elements of such archival material within a broader context. In the case of this album, it seems to have been put together to narrate Porter’s philanthropic efforts in India. It is certainly more “formal” in tone than the other Porter album in the archive, which includes photos of family and friends and even her pet dog. One can speculate that Porter would have shown the India album to raise awareness of the situation in India and perhaps to even persuade her audience to support more of such efforts.2 Martyn Jolly, “An Australian Spiritualist’s Personal Cartes-de-Visite Album,” in Shifting Focus: Colonial Australian Photography 1850-1920, ed. Anne Maxwell and Josephine Croci (North Melbourne, Vic: Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd, 2015), 71–72. Continue reading ““Dom Types”” →

Una Porter Photo Album

Una Porter, c1990
Una Porter, c1990. University of Melbourne Archives, Una Porter collection 1997.0002.00001

Una Porter’s photographic albums, held in the University of Melbourne’s archives, present labelled photographs narrating her journey through China, Hong Kong, Japan, and India during the 1920s. Porter undertook her tour on a philanthropic mission, documenting her travels and compiling two albums of the photos she took. The albums are particularly important in revealing information about Una Porter’s missionary work abroad and the route she took, presenting a visual account of the Western experience in Asia. Continue reading “Una Porter Photo Album” →

Anniversary of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation

Forget about Halloween, the 31st of October is Reformation Day, and 2017 marks 500 years since the German monk Martin Luther (1493-1546) nailed his 95 thesis to the door of a church in Wittenberg. That thesis sparked a religious revolution which resulted in the Protestant Reformation. This event changed the spiritual landscape of Europe and beyond.

Along with the publication of controversial texts, Europe was flooded with printed pamphlets and images; the Protestant Reformation also helped to marshal the development and evolution of the print medium.

The Rare Books collection at the Baillieu Library holds a 1518 copy of Luther’s Resolutiones disputationum de Indulgentiarum virtute (Resolutions on the disputations about the power of indulgences). While three very different portraits of him from the Baillieu Library Print Collection show that attempting to frame Martin Luther and his legacy is a very complex exercise.

Martin Luther 1540
Heinrich Aldegrever after Hans Brosamer, Martin Luther, 1540
James Bretherton after Hans Holbein the elder, Martin Luther, (1770-90)
Unknown artist, Martin Luther, 1773

Yolngu culture comes to the Baillieu Library Print Collection

‘May I have a volunteer to cut off their hair.’ This was the arresting opening statement to the art history tutorial led by Yolngu elder and artist Wukun Wanambi. Students soon presented their heads to have a piece of their hair snipped off and then looked on with fascination as the hair was transformed into marwat (paint brush), which then shaped an image, as the artist created marks on paper with the brush and gapan (white clay) transported to the University from the Northern Territory.

Wukun Wanambi leading an art history tutorial. Photo: Xing Lu

Wukun Wanambi is a frequent visitor and advisor to the University of Melbourne and the Library is delighted to now have one of his prints in the collection. The etching Wawurritjpal V (2006) was one of five prints gifted by Dr Susan Lowish through the Cultural Gifts Program in 2017. The prints were all made in the Yirrkala Print Space at Buku-Larrngay Mulka in the Eastern region of Arnhem Land.

Like many Yolngu artists, Wukun Wanambi has a high profile international career. He visited London in 2013 and created larrakitj (hollow log memorial poles) for the 2015 British Museum exhibition Indigenous Australia: enduring civilisation. In 2017 he travelled to the US to work on a major forthcoming Aboriginal art exhibition.

Wukun inherited the rights to paint the saltwater imagery of the Marrakulu clan. Wawurritjpal V expresses an ancestral story which frequently appears in his artistic practice.

Wukun Wanambi, Wawurritjpal V (2006) © Reproduced with the permission of Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre

The prints produced in the dedicated facilities at the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre demonstrate many exciting innovations and developments since Aboriginal artists first took up Western printmaking techniques in the 1960s.

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