The Thomas Dick Birrpai Photograph Collection consists of more than 300 glass plate negatives and glass lantern slides held in the collections of the Australian Museum. They represent a substantial portion of around 500 images originally taken by Dick, the remainder of which do not appear to have survived. The images were taken between 1910 and 1920 by Thomas Dick, an oyster farmer and local historian in the Port Macquarie area on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. Dick took a series of staged portraits of local Birrpai people undertaking traditional food gathering, tool production and other activities as their ancestors had done before the Europeans arrived and probably until quite recently.
This was an unusual practice that has left an incredibly rich record of these activities that would otherwise have been largely or completely undocumented. But the collection is much more than this when its context is considered. The photographs were taken at the very time when the government had provided legislative powers to its Aborigines Protection Board to pursue an active policy of racial segregation and control, including the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families, to be trained for domestic and rural service. The Birrpai people in Dick’s photographs were living this new reality, whilst still retaining deep cultural knowledge of the practices recorded in these images. That Dick sought to record such photographs at precisely this moment in history would no doubt have been at some personal cost. It is a tribute to both the determination of Birrpai people and Dick to ensure that these vital aspects of culture were documented.
Even more important is the value these images have obtained over the past fifty years to Birrpai people - as documentation of traditional practices certainly, but also as deeply personal family records of ancestors. Dick did not name his subjects, but their identities have been reclaimed by descendants, adding new meaning and value to the images.
The value of the collection is a sum of these parts, but also much more. All images of Aboriginal ancestors have value, but the range and number of images in the Thomas Dick Birrpai Photograph Collection form a unique and vital documentation of both the recreated practices portrayed and the historical context in which they were posed and made. It represents an unfolding story of cross-cultural interaction spanning more than a century. They are of value in different ways to Birrpai people and to any and all who are interested in the complex personal entanglements that have characterised the history of cross-cultural relationships in Australia.
https://www.amw.org.au/register/listings/thomas-dick-birrpai-photograph-collection
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-24/forgotten-1920s-photos-reveal-insight-into-coastal/6970988
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