Re-historicising the Image

This paper argues that the fundamental tension between perceptions of photographs as objective documentary records inextricably connected with traces of time and place, and the capacity of photographs to be manipulated, re-imagined, and to take on new context-related meanings can be employed to interrogate colonial constructions of history in settler nations. This paper examines how these ideas have been manifested in works by two Indigenous Australian artists who have employed this transferability of meaning to reclaim or re-imagine colonial images of Aboriginal Australians to comment on aspects of history, race and identity—past and present.