Intimate Icons: Book Launch

In 2021 in conjunction with the National Film and Sound Archive’s Mervyn Bishop: The Exhibition, PhotoAccess ran the workshop Intimate Icons. This was an extended darkroom photography workshop celebrating and responding to the work of Mervyn Bishop, one of Australia’s most influential photo-journalists.

Mervyn Bishop fell in love with photography when a schoolfriend’s father showed him the magic of darkroom printing. He went on to become one of Australia’s most influential photographers, and is particularly well-known for his documents of diverse aspects of Indigenous Australian life in the 1970s and 1980s. Many of Mervyn’s images, such as his shot of then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam pouring sand through the hand of Gurindji traditional owner Vincent Lingiari in 1975, became national icons. Others, such as his photographs celebrating Aboriginal community life, documenting Aboriginal people’s living conditions or narrating the impact of religious missions on Aboriginal men, women and children, remain significant social documents.

Darkroom specialist Wouter Van de Voorde led the group through an eight-week hands-on exploration of Mervyn Bishop’s incredible photographic legacy. After investigating Mervyn’s works on display at the NFSA and learning more about the context for their creation, the group developed a body of work responding to Mervyn’s distinctively warm, intimate and engaging documentary style. The work was curated into a professionally produced photo-book showcasing the outcomes of the experience.

Join us at PhotoAccess, or via stream online, for the official launch of this beautiful and important photobook celebrating the work and voice of indigenous icon, Mervyn Bishop.

6pm Thursday 1st September 2022. Drinks and nibbles provided.