Something Personal : An insider's Chronicles from The Movement for Aboriginal Rights 1971-2022
‘I saw powerful beauty, strength, resilience, ingenuity, and hope at a time where others mostly saw only despair, their own discomfort and shame.’
A survey of the work of photographer Juno Gemes is well overdue. Well known and widely published for her work on The Movement, representing the cultural and political struggle of indigenous peoples in Australia, she has amassed a nationally significant archive of images, This includes the struggle for land rights, the handing back of Uluru to the traditional owners, and more recently the National Apology to the Stolen Generations in the Federal Parliament.
ABOUT JUNO GEMES
Juno Gemes is one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary photographers.
In words and images she has spent the last 50 years documenting the changing social
landscape of Australia, and in particular the lives, cultural and political struggles, and achievements of Indigenous Australians, to the present day. Literary Portraiture remain another consistent theme.
Hungarian-born, the Hawkesbury River based activist/ photographer/writer /publisher came to photography from a background in theatre. A NIDA Graduate, Juno undertook multi-media performance work in Europe and the UK, Collective Performance Art with The Human Body at 10 Cunningham Street, Research at The Yellow House which leading to the collaborative film Uluru with Michael Glasheen in the Central Desert for over six months.
During the filming, Gemes took up the still camera in 1970 to communicate the invisible realities of Indigenous Australians via her respected informed photo advocacy photography.
Over the last five decades, Gemes has been devoted to photographing Indigenous Leaders, Community Members and significant events creating an alternate view of Australian history. She had over 20 solo exhibitions including the landmark Proof - Portraits from the Movement 1975-2003 at The National Portrait Gallery which toured for five years around Australia and was also exhibited at the Kluge Rhue Museum at The University of Virginia USA. Her photographs are widely published in major Australian publications and in UK and USA.
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