Trust the camera to always seek the truth
Erin O’Dwyer; 10/5/08;
Conversations With The Mob; Megan Lewis; UWA Press
When photo-journalist Megan Lewis won a Walkley award for her series on the Martu people of the Western Desert, photography critic Robert McFarlane described her work as detailed and heartfelt but “only intermittently touching”. “Her comprehensive essay” he wrote in the Herald, “on this rarely photographed, remote community is not helped by garish colour prints, so deeply saturated as to add an unnecessary air of unreality to an already exotic subject” It was stinging criticism and, I would argue, unwarranted. Conversations With The Mob is a stunning collection of more than 200 photographs and oral stories that capture the grief and joy of a community that see-saws between traditional and Western cultures. For the past few weeks, it has lain on my coffee table and I’ve dipped into it countless times. Lewis’s own stories of living with the Mob, as the Martu call themselves, are compelling, insightful and beautifully written, in a spare style that balances candour and colour.
The Sydney Morning Herald, No Internet Text
Importantly, the photojournalist’s own storytelling is mixed in with personal accounts from lawmen, elders and community members about the Dreamtime, payback, marriage, sexual abuse, death and even the footy
“Women would dream about their baby’s spirit before they go hunting, they see the baby’s jarrinypa [conception totem],” recalls one woman.
“It makes me angry” says elder Clarrie Robertson, speaking about sexual abuse. “One Aboriginal person does it and they think we all do it I have only known of one. It wasn’t dealt with properly - swept under the carpet.”
The book is driven by Lewis’s beautiful photography. Images of red dirt and big skies sit alongside daily life captured in intimate detail: a chubby baby named Shakira is bathed in a plastic orange fruit bowl on the way to another funeral; an old woman makes damper outside her house with an electric frying pan and an extension cord. The images are beautifully reproduced and well-captioned.
But praise aside, Lewis’s work raises difficult questions and what McFarlane really questions is the photographer’s honesty Has she manipulated her images, bumping up the contrast to create a cinematic quality? Has she glamorised her subjects? Romanticised their way of life?
These are relevant questions, not only because of the digital revolution, but because of the controversy press photographers frequently create. Think of Spencer Platt, who won the World Press Photo Prize in 2006 for a shot of “affluent Lebanese” in a Mini Cooper driving through a bombed-out suburb in Beirut. In fact, the four friends lived there, and it was the first time they been home to assess the damage. Who was really the voyeur?
Lewis, a former staff photographer with The Australian and a stringer for Reuters in Perth, would have been aware of these dangers when she embarked on the project in 2002.
True, the Walkley was an easy win. Done well, such an assignment will always reap rewards - and awards - because it reveals a mysterious minority rarely seen.
But Lewis spent more than two years living with the Martu people, in desert communities seven hours’ drive from remote Port Hedland in Western Australia. Patience gained her trust and she was granted unprecedented access to one of the last indigenous groups to come into contact with Europeans.
In her introduction, Lewis recounts a conversation with a Martu woman initially opposed to her project. “Now I see what you are doing” the woman says. “Your photos are making Martu look at themselves and think, what are we doing? Where are we going and are we doing the right thing? Now I see why you have to do this because Martu have to look at themselves?’Any criticism of Lewis and her work must surely be answered right there.