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type C photograph on paper (sheet: 49.0 cm x 36.0 cm, image: 41.0 cm x 28.0 cm, frame: depth 4.3 cm)
Archie Roach (b. 1956), singer/songwriter, lived at Framlingham Mission before being removed from his parents at the age of four. At eleven he asked the couple he believed to be his parents why he was black and they were white; they told him his parents had died. His foster sister introduced him to the guitar and keyboards, and he began to play country music songs. At the age of fifteen, he was contacted by his natural sister, who told him their mother had just died. Bitterly, he spent the next fourteen years on the streets, battling alcoholism. He met his lifelong partner, the late Ruby Hunter, when she was sixteen. Having had children with her, and having beaten his alcohol dependency, he wrote his first song, 'Took the Children Away', which he performed on Melbourne radio and television in 1988. Spotted by one of Paul Kelly's bandmembers, he was invited to open a Paul Kelly concert in early 1989. Kelly produced Roach's first album, Charcoal Lane (1990), which was on the US Rolling Stone's Top 50 albums for 1992, achieved gold sales in Australia, and earned Roach two ARIAs and a human rights award. Three more albums followed before the live compilation 1988, released in late 2009. Both solo and with his beloved Hunter, Roach has recorded and performed with many top Australian and international acts.
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This portrait of the singer songwriter Archie Roach was made in 1992 by Bill McAuley. It is a large black and white type C photograph measuring 41 cm by 28 cm in a modest wooden frame.
Archie’s face takes up almost all the photograph. His head is tilted to his left against a deep black background. Archie is wearing a wide ribbed knitted beanie pushed down low on his brow. The beanie is striped horizontally, dark at the top with a wide mid- tone band, a narrow dark band and finishing with a white edging, just above his eyebrows.
Archie has full eyebrows, wide-set dark eyes with shadows and several lines arched below them. He is looking steadily off to his right. Archie has a broad nose with lines extending either side defining his cheeks. Light shines onto his face from the right, washing over his cheek and along the ridge of his nose. Shadow darkens his right cheek which blends into the dark background.
His lips are full. The upper lip is dark and well defined, the lower lip softly lit. A deep shadow below his lips and above his chin merges into the dark background. This is in sharp contrast to the light on his face which forms an inverted triangle from the white band of the beanie to his chin at the lower edge of the image.
Audio description written by Krysia Kitch and voiced by Alana Sivell, 2021
