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Torres Strait visit showcases vast photographic treasures
Heath Garrett and Ash Pollock-Harris from AIATSIS’ Audiovisual Access Unit prepare for a Community Access visit the Torres Strait later this month. Image: AIATSIS
by John Paul Janke
Communities across the Torres Strait will get the unique opportunity later this month to see thousands of historical and contemporary photographs as part of a visit by AIATSIS - the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. As part of the Institute’s Return of Material to Indigenous Clients program, AIATSIS staff will hold a four-day community visit on Thursday Island showcasing a selection of images and audio recordings of the Torres Strait drawn from its vast audiovisual archive. The visit in particular features a collection of over 2500 images taken across the Torres Strait Islands in 1986 as part of the Institute’s publication After 200 Years. The book was the result of a project that sent 20
Indigenous and nonIndigenous photographers into Indigenous communities between 1986 and 1987 to document the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander life in Australia 200 years after European colonisation. Photographers snapped over 2500 images of everyday life across the Torres Strait including visits to Dauan Island, Thursday Island, Murray Island, Badu Island, Saibai Island, York Island, Yam, Moa, Horn Island, Jervis Island and Mabuaig Island. In addition, clients will also be able to browse through over 300 hours of audio recordings and a database of over 60,000 images already digitised from the Institute’s priceless photographic collection - the largest collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander images in the world. AIATSIS Principal, Russ Taylor, says that such community visits are often
an emotional reunion or reconnection for generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. “Often people are viewing photographs from our archive taken several decades ago of family members – such as their mother or father or grandparents or great grandparents –for the very first time.” Our community access visits facilitate a wonderful reconnection by generations of our people with their family, with their culture and with their country,” he concluded. The AIATSIS Audiovisual Archive contains approximately one million items. These include 45,000 hours of recorded sound, over 650,000 photographic images, 6000 video titles and 6.5 million feet of motion picture film and over 1000 artefacts. The majority of the items held in the
Audiovisual Archive represent the primary results of field research funded by the AIATSIS Research Grants Program as well as historical and contemporary items which have been deposited by individuals, families or organisations for safekeeping and appropriate access. The material is unique and irreplaceable and provides an invaluable link between past, present and future generations of Indigenous and nonIndigenous Australians. Last financial year, AIATSIS copied and returned almost $100,000 worth of materials to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients. The Torres Strait Islands Community visit will be based at the Port Kennedy Hall on Thursday Island from Monday 22nd to Thursday 25th April 2013. A ‘Welcome to Country’ ceremony will take place on Monday 22nd at 9.30am.
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