Disconnected

I am an Aboriginal (Yiman) woman living on Gubbi Gubbi land, disconnected from my Country. In ‘Disconnection’ I have explored a range of photographic mediums to disrupt historical photographic norms. Photography was weaponised by Western colonisers to record data and dehumanise my ancestors. I am reclaiming photography’s problematic history, blindly believed as truth. Using this to my advantage, I am re-telling the narrative of colonisation and exposing the truth of what dispersal means for Aboriginal people. I re-photographed family photos on 120mm film with a pinhole camera. I have manipulated the film to suggest bullet holes on scanned negatives. When printed, i scaled the images with the holes at 9mm, faking the indexical trace of a real bullet. This is a form of truth-telling used to discuss the dispersal of my mob, using photographic mediums to represent my lack of connection to Country and culture due to the dispersals.