Paper short abstract:

This paper will assess Sydney's inner suburb of Redfern as an effective example of visual urban memory. The case study will investigate the interaction between community members and the urban space as stakeholders in the preservation of cultural integrity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will assess Sydney's inner suburb of Redfern as an effective example of visual urban memory in the 1992 Conference Call photographic project by Brenda L. Croft.

Redfern has long represented a historic landmark for Indigenous cultural resistance located in the urbanised core of Australia's most populous city.

Strategies of cultural resilience in Australia's capital cities are insightful points of access to long-lasting histories of inequality, and visual representation stands as a compelling tool in the narrative of marginalisation determined by rapidly-changing urban landscapes. Once a powerful colonial weapon, the practice of photography has undergone a process of re-appropriation led by many cultural producers of Indigenous descent.

I will therefore resort to a contemporary photographic series to provide an example of how both physical and social outskirts of Australian metropolitan areas have turned into creative studios for the photographic gaze, and drastic changes implied by urban renewals have grown into material for new seductive visual narratives.

The paper will then discuss the effectiveness of contemporary photographs as visual testifiers of progressing histories of conflict. How can art merge into documentation and provide lucid representations of daily life of urban communities and which codes of aesthetic composition are suitable to present the social space as a lively protagonist will be key topics in this speech.

On the background to Redfern's chronicles, photography's visual rhetoric will hence be discussed as a vehicle to narrate the interaction between community members and the urban space as stakeholders in the preservation of cultural integrity.