Paper short abstract:

During a decade of fieldwork I built close working partnerships with a group of Ngarrindjeri people living in south eastern South Australia. My role as a photographer and our work with photographs catalyzed these relationships. This paper looks at these images and their powers as socializing agents.

Paper long abstract:

The discussion in this paper is framed by my fieldwork which spanned just over ten years and involved building close working partnerships and friendships with a group of Ngarrindjeri men and women who live in and around The Coorong in south eastern South Australia. My role as a photographer and our work with photographs catalyzed these relationships.

This paper explores how a series of black and white photographs taken during the early part of my fieldwork that document the reburial of the skeletal remains of Ngarrindjeri 'old people', repatriated from museums around the world became an entry point for connection and the building of key relationships. The reburial was a very significant event for the Ngarrindjeri people involved and the images that came from it became important markers for the reinforcement of relationships with the living and those that had passed away. This series of photographs provides a map for charting how particular photographs were used by people in multiple forums to reinforce specific relationships —with myself, with people who had recently passed away and with the 'old people' who had been returned to 'country' in the reburial ceremony who it was important to remember. The multiple ways in which photographs were used during my fieldwork points to the significance of the role played by photography in anthropology.