Mervyn bishop biography of michael

  • Mervyn Bishop (born 1945): One of the first Indigenous photographers in Australia, Bishop began taking photos in the 1960s. His photographs documented the political and social changes happening at the time, including the Aboriginal land rights movement and the fight for equality and justice.
  • Michael Riley (1960-2004): A Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi photographer and filmmaker, Riley’s work often explored the intersection of Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures. His photographs have been exhibited internationally and he is considered one of Australia’s most significant Indigenous artists.
  • Tracey Moffatt (born 1960): A photographer and filmmaker of the Gamilaroi/Murri people, Moffatt’s work often challenges stereotypes and explores issues of race, gender, and identity. She has exhibited widely and represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 2017.
  • Ricky Maynard (born 1953): A Tasmanian photographer of the Aboriginal people of the Bass Strait islands, Maynard’s work often documents the cultural heritage and contemporary experiences of his community. He has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally.
  • Wayne Quilliam (born 1960): A photographer of the Wiradjuri people, Quilliam’s work often explores the intersection of Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures. He has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally, and has won numerous awards for his work.
  • Destiny Deacon (born 1957): A photographer and multimedia artist of the K’ua K’ua and Erub/Mer people, Deacon’s work often explores issues of race, gender, and identity. She has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally, and was the first Indigenous artist to have a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.
  • Leah King-Smith (born 1957): A photographer of the Gurang Gurang and Gooreng Gooreng people, King-Smith’s work often explores issues of identity, memory, and representation. She has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally,

Wungguli – Shadow : Photographing the spirit and Michael Riley


Michael RILEY Untitled, from the series cloud [angel back, full wings] 2000, photograph, chromogenic pigment print, 110.0 x 155.0 cm, reproduced courtesy of the Michael Riley Foundation and VISCOPY, Australia
click to enlarge

Feathers float – so do clouds – and dreams.

Feather – a Wiradjuri word for feather and wing are the same, Gawuurra. Probably Cowra, the name of a town to the south, comes from this. In contemporary Aboriginal practices of other groups, feather-appendage is extended in meaning to string tassel, sacred string marking a journey, connecting landscapes, people, family lineages, and, importantly, the embryo cord linking child and mother.

A wing of the eagle hawk, Malyan, a skin name, a scary dream-being overhead. Is it guardian angel or assassin? In the south-east, a feather left behind is often evidence of such a spiritual visit.

At the funeral of actor and activist Bob Maza in 2000, his son held his father’s Bible and recollected his words, ‘to dare to dream your dreams’. It’s interesting that Michael Riley chose to avoid the word ‘dream’ in naming his final photographic work cloud (2000), avoiding glib connections to ‘Dreamtime’. What rolls past our eyes and through our senses is the culmination of self-examination. In a series of poetic photographic texts made increasingly poignant through events in his personal life, these are dreams of childhood memories in Dubbo, New South Wales: dreams of floating, of release.

You talk of conservation
Keep the forest pristine green
Yet in 200 years your materialism
Has stripped the forests clean
A racist’s a contradiction
That’s understood by none
Mostly their left hand holds a Bible
Their right hand holds a gun

Michael Riley’s earlier photographic essays, Sacrifice (1992), flyblown (1998), and the evocative short fil

  • The text is an easy
  • Mervyn Bishop (born July 1945)
      • Mervyn bishop biography of michael
  • Australian documentary photographer Mervyn Bishop

    • Mervyn Bishop

    Portraits of Elders | 2017

    2. 'Kandos Elders' 2017 photographed by Ian Hobbs

    Portraits of Elders. @ Kandos Museum
    Portraits of Elders presents eight portraits of Kandos elders. The people figured in these photographs have either lived their entire lives in the Kandos– Rylstone area or have important long-standing relationships to the area. These elders have witnessed the growth and transformation of the town. They are descendants of the local Dabee tribe, immigrants who moved here after World War II, and local characters everyone in town will recognise. These portraits are records and a paying of respect to the elders of the Kandos–Rylstone area and to the important part they have played in its history.

    bio:

    Mervyn Bishop was the first Aboriginal press photographer in Australia, beginning his career as a cadet photographer with The Sydney Morning Herald in 1963. In 1971 he was voted News Photographer of the Year, but three years later he began work at the new Department of Aboriginal Affairs, travelling the country to document Aboriginal social history. In 1979 he returned to work at the Herald. Since 1986 he has worked as a freelance photographer and lecturer. His retrospective exhibition, In Dreams: Mervyn Bishop, Thirty Years of Photography 1960–1990, initially curated by Tracy Moffat, has been on tour for a decade. He worked as a stills photographer on Phil Noyce’s film Rabbit Proof Fence, and was awarded the Australia Council’s Red Ochre Award in December 2000.

    statement:

    Mervyn Bishop has created some of the most iconic press photographs of Australian history, and produced across his career, a powerful visual record of the social reality of Aboriginal people in Australia.

    Materials | Series of photographic portraits.
    Location | Kandos Museum

    2024 Artists

    Cementa Inc. acknowledges the Wiradjuri people as the Traditional Custodians of the Country upon which we live, learn and work. We honour

    Mervyn Bishop

    Australian news and documentary photographer

    Mervyn Bishop (born July 1945) is an Australian news and documentary photographer. Joining The Sydney Morning Herald as a cadet in 1962, he was the first Aboriginal Australian to work on a metropolitan daily newspaper and one of the first to become a professional photographer. In 1971, four years after completing his cadetship, he was named Australian Press Photographer of the Year. He has continued to work as a photographer and lecturer.

    Early life and education

    Mervyn Bishop, a Murri man, was born in July 1945 in Brewarrina in north-west New South Wales. His father, "Minty" Bishop, had been a soldier and shearer, and was himself born to an Aboriginal mother and a Punjabi Indian father. In 1950, "Minty" gained an "official exemption certificate which permitted 'more advanced' Aborigines to live apart from mission blackfellas in post-war Australia". This enabled the family to live among "ordinary" people in Brewarrina. The catch to this certificate was that the exempt Aboriginal people were expected to "sever their ties with their old culture". or 1963,

    By high school he had started "chronicling the family with a camera – first his mother's Kodak620 and, then a 35mm Japanese camera he bought for £15". He moved to Dubbo when he was 14 to finish his high school at Dubbo High School.

    He returned to study later, receiving an Associate Diploma in Adult Education at Sydney College of Advanced Education in 1989.

    Career

    Bishop began his career as a cadet photographer with The Sydney Morning Herald in 1962, the first Aboriginal photographer hired by the paper, becoming the first Aboriginal person to work on a metropolitan daily newspaper and one of the first to become a professional photographer. During four years of his cadetship, he completed a Pho