Aboriginal People, Mossman

Press, 19 October 1987, Page 9

Aboriginal People, Mossman

“Aboriginal People — Mossman 1985.” Photographs by Tonia Morgan, at the C.S.A. Gallery, until October 25. Reviewed by Pat Unger. Using a documentary style of photography, Tonia Morgan looks at the life of Aboriginal people residing at the Mision settlement in Mossman, North Queensland, Australia. Her prints, at the C.S.A. are an interesting statement of their muted presence in an alien concept. Realism here is not the uncompromising view that Ans Westra showed in “Washday at the Pa.” Her rural and small-town

Maoris smiled a community smile in the face of life touched by poverty. Or so her camera showed, as it did not seem to catch the unseen strengths of the Maori way. Morgan’s camera is less ambitious. Although she, too, is concerned for their “... striving to adapt... to being trapped between two cultures... unable to cope in Western society...” her images don’t carry that message. A part from one Shot of what looks like impetigo on, presumably, a child’s roughened knees, the mood of this exhibition is one of studied understatement. European and

Christian tidiness and cleanliness tend to make this group of people appear modest and orderly. These “... unassuming and friendly people” have a materially reduced environment — a tidied up simplicity, verging on emptiness, at the mission settlement in Queensland. Morgan’s record of their lives is softened by a concern for their dignity and by a receptive feeling for the pictorial potential of the background. Camping equipment, a slow pace of life and a peacefulness in the absence of any highlighted “. . . junk

food . . . alcohol... (or other) ... sophisticated” disasters alters the intention of this exhibition from one of sociological photo-comment to one of pictorial comment. It captures the mood of its subjects for a well framed but fleeting moment. Photographic essays on ethnic groups alienated in their own land are fraught with difficulties. These prints show a sensitive approach to capturing on film the people who live on a mission station in Australia. Their faces evoke plenty of response and underscore their plight. Verbal reiteration is unnecessary.