© National Portrait Gallery 2025
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196
National Photographic Portrait Prize 2007 Finalist
This photograph was taken at a time when many in Aboriginal communities felt a strong suspicion that the Howard government had a hidden agenda to revoke the permit system in the Northern Territory which would then allow uranium mining on traditional Aboriginal land. There was at the time an acute political awareness about an impending land grab waiting only for a suitable excuse for it to happen. I asked Donald and Moses, traditional land owners whom I have come to know from previous trips to the Gunbalanya community, to sit on the land as they often do and to assert, with their hand on the land, directly to my camera 'This is our land'. As events turned out, their suspicions about the permit system being revoked were wholly justified.
Artist Dadang Christanto discusses his portrait taken by Hari Ho and how it relates to Dadang's sculpture 'Heads from the North'.
Photography is the most pervasive and popular medium for portraiture and makes a natural fit with the Gallery, being a natural extension of the Gallery's longstanding commitment to photography as a contemporary portrait medium.
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