Photography is the purest story-telling. One that speaks all languages. And needs no dictionary.

I am interested in the relationship between photography and anthropology. I am fascinated in teaching photography to people who have never photographed and directing projects in which they shoot their own lives, experiences and attitudes.

These projects work in collaboration with social, health and environmental organizations as a way to investigate, create awareness and aim to improve the situation of the participants.

2000-2001 China, Sri Lanka, Vietnam. Photographed and recorded intimate narratives from women across Yunnan Province.

2001 Photographed and curated Photovoice project in remote areas Wenhai (Naxi region) and Zhongdian (Tibetan region), Yunnan Province. TNC The Nature Conservancy projects. While I was in Yunnan photographing for my own work, Ms Norton (Edward´s mother), who was at the time directing the TNC office with Mr Norton, asked me to photograph one of the village exhibitions and design a Photovoice exhibition in Zhongdian, Yunnan.

We reached Wen Hai village, a little remote place surrounded by big snowy mountains near Lijiang, by foot and donkey. A village man greeted us with a chicken killing ritual. After the chicken soup dinner, I sat around a fire with the Naxi women, the Photovoice women and He Laoshi, a pioneer ethnologist and brave human being, who later became one of the women I photographed for my exhibition. The Naxi women taught us Naxi words, and we sang them English songs.

The next day we set up the exhibition of photographs taken by local villagers, in the village school courtyard. During the afternoon, villagers strolled in to see their photographs and to take part in the opening ceremony.

Back in Kunming we worked in a larger edit of images for a Zhongdian exhibition which would take part in a cultural festival. Zhongdian is a Tibetan region of Yunnan, where the original name Zhongdian, was being replaced by the Chinese Government to Shangrila, to suit the Han Chinese tourism industry.

In two days, the Photovoice team transformed an unused room into a gallery space. We painted and scrubbed and hammered and hung. The exhibition showed very personal images of local life and rituals in remote villages of Yunnan. It was also an investigation towards future environmental projects. It later travelled to the U.S.

The Nature Conservancy, Photovoice, China (View link…)

Sang in Mandarin on a buffalo among canola fields field for a Yunnan TV program. (don´t have a single photo!).

2001. One year later I returned to Australia with an exhibition and narratives about the lives of twenty Chinese women.

2002. In Australia, the exhibition titled “So tell me…” was part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival It toured to many venues and galleries. Images from the exhibition were part of other exhibitions.

-Eye on Peace, IWDA International Women´s Development Agency 2003, Melbourne Australia. A group exhibition to raise funds for Afghan women´s development projects.

-Yuen Fen, French Alliance Gallery, Barcelona, Spain, 2006

-Imagining Ourselves (publication), IMOW International Museum of Women, U.S, 2006 (View link…)

Imagining Ourselves (publication), Marcela´s story (View link…)

2003. For a year, the exhibition was handed over to a women´s NGO, Loomgrowers, based on the coast of New South Wales. This independent NGO run by women in the Bega Valley, has created links with women who also weave, in Ruili on the China/Myanmar border. Employment was created for those women who struggle to earn enough money to live from their ancient weaving practices.

Loomgrowers project, Australia/Myanmar (View link…)

2005. When I visited the women, many told me they had abandoned their weavings for a more substancial income. They were excited when we proposed that they weave again and sell their work to an Australian women´s NGO. My visit to Ruili involved photographing the women, explaining the project proposal to the weavers, purchase samples of the their work, and meet with the Chinese Women´s Federation to have legal documents signed and delivered back to Australia.

Some of the more prominant issues facing many Ruili women is economic crisis for single mothers who have lost their husbands to opium overdoses. Many women were raising children on one income in remote huts, unable to afford for their children to continue with their schooling.

One of the main aims and current activity of the Loomgrowers is to generate profits to supply school sponsorships to children from these families. Teachers from remote schools are asked to select children who demonstrate excellent effort and merit to be awarded a scholarship. The Loomgrowers website invited donations for these sponsorships.

2004. Awarded an international artist residency in Spain, by the Australia Council for the Arts, Community Cultural Development Board. These residencies were given to eight Australian emerging arts workers. The places of the residencies included: Egypt, Sierre Leone, Spain, Vanuatu, U.S. The photography project I directed was hosted by Granollers Council, north of Barcelona. The project titled El Somni (The Dream) invited 20, migrant and Catalan residents, from four Granollers neighbourhoods to attend a series of workshops and photograph images that reflected how they “dream” their neighbourhood. The images which depicted intimate experiences of isolation, displacement, loneliness and concern for the environment, were exhibited in glass panels at four bus shelters.

This public space exhibition was a conscious act of reclaming public space for the benefit and use of the local community. These bus shelters are normally used as advertising space.

Australia Council for the Arts international residencies,

Out There, Everywhere, 2003

(View Link…)

Photography project El Somni, Barcelona 2004, article, (View link…)

Photography project El Somni, Barcelona 2004 (View Link…)

Most of the following images were taken by project participants and project photographers that I have then photographed:

As the four month project progressed, I was asked to speak at various institutions, radio, television etc about the project and CCD. It became apparent that my presence in Granollers Council and growing interest in this practice with both, political and artistic implications, was being maximised to promote a new idea. Sensing my conflicts between directing the project while simultaneously becoming a CCD spokesperson across Catalonia, I suggested a second stage to the process, post-project, which could focus on CCD pedagogy.

( Please read Pedagogy)

2005. Back in Melbourne, Australia. I directed a participatory photography project titled My Place. Funded by City of Maribyrnong and hosted by CELAS (Centre of Social Assistance for Latin American and Spanish community), the project aimed to give the women undertaking a Women in Leadership course an opportunity to reflect on what they consider their place is and how they see themselves in their communties in Australia. The workshops were intimate sessions in which the participants, while sharing the images they photographed were also revisiting memories of the physical and emotional journey of their lives in Australia.

The following images were taken by the participants and were part of the exhibition:

When the participants were asked to choose an image that they identified with, they all chose this photo. They all remembered immigrating to Australia as young adults with children, a couple of suitcases and a few dreams. Like most Latin americans who migrated in the early 1970´s, they inevitably spent, their first years in this isolated continent working in a factory.

2006. Taught a photography for social commentary course at Jaume Oller Centre, Barcelona, Spain. This process asked the participants to photograph themselves in spaces or situations they considered to be theirs, to be a peep into the worlds they inhabit. The process combined photography and theatre workshops in which the participants were asked to create their scenarios using props in the workshops space. The aims of the workshops over four months, were to explore by re-enacting intimate worlds, writing and sharing these worlds with the other participants to then deepen their photography experiences.

The exhibition titled La Meva vida y la Teva (My world and yours) boldly showed the personal lives of the photographers and then of a subject of their choice.

2006. Co-facilitated a participatory photography project. Photovoice U.K, Aids Alliance U.K. This project implemented in three countries: Cambodia, Ecuador and India. Co-photographer and facilitator, Lynn Weddle and I, worked with participants across Ecuador who work with HIV prevention NGO´s and are HIV affected.

We all lived in a remote location in nothern Quito, workshopping all day and often late into the evening. Some participants had never photographed with a digital camera before. The participants were excited by the challenge of improving their photography skills. I led theatre workshops each morning, implementing Boal teachniques and other physical theatre practices.

After the photography training, the participants went back to the their towns and photographed over a four week period. We all returned to northern Quito, edited, wrote texts and presented the final edits to Aids Alliance U.K for exhibitions and a publication titled Unheard Voices, Hidden Lives. See link below.

The second part of my work in this project was to photograph HIV affected communities across Ecuador: HIV clinics, hospitals, sex workers, transvestite groups, gay groups and organisations.

Photovoice, Ecuador 2006 (View link…)

Aids Alliance publication, Unheard Voices, Hidden Lives, U.K 2006 (View link…)

Unheard Voices, Hidden Lives, U.K 2006, download book (View link…)