Mervyn Bishop (born July 1945) is an Australian news and documentary photographer. Joining The Sydney Morning Herald as a cadet in 1962 he was the first
Aboriginal Australian to work on a metropolitan daily newspaper and one of the first to become a professional photographer. In 1971, four years after completing his cadetship, he was named
Australian Press Photographer of the Year. He has continued to work as a photographer and lecturer.
Early life
Mervyn Bishop, a
Murri man,[1] was born in July 1945[2] in
Brewarrina in north-west New South Wales. His father, "Minty" Bishop, had been a soldier and shearer, and was himself born to an Aboriginal mother and a
Punjabi Indian father. In 1950, "Minty" gained an "official exemption certificate which permitted 'more advanced' Aborigines to live apart from mission
blackfellas in post-war Australia". This enabled the family to live among "ordinary" people in Brewarrina. The catch to this certificate was that the exempt Aboriginal people were expected to "sever their ties with their old culture".[1][3] or 1963,[4]
By high school he had started "chronicling the family with a camera – first his mother's
Kodak620 and, then a
35mm Japanese camera he bought for £15".[5] He moved to
Dubbo when he was 14 to finish his high school at the Dubbo High School.[citation needed]
Career
Bishop began his career as a cadet photographer with The Sydney Morning Herald in 1962, the first Aboriginal photographer hired by the paper,[1] becoming the first Aboriginal person to work on a metropolitan daily newspaper and one of the first to become a professional photographer.[4] During four years of his cadetship, he completed a Photography Certificate Course at
Sydney Technical College.[6] In 2004, he remained the only indigenous photographer to have been employed by the paper.[7]
From 1974 to 1980, he worked as the
Department of Aboriginal Affairs staff photographer. Some of his most enduring work came from this period, as he visited
Indigenous communities and documented "the first flush of an idealistic era when land rights, equal wages and government-funded aid seemed to presage a new dawn for Aboriginal Australians".[7]
It was during this time, in 1975, that he shot the iconic photograph of
Gough Whitlam pouring soil into the hand of
Gurindjitraditional owner,
Vincent Lingiari, at the handover of the deeds to Gurindji country at Wattie Creek. This photograph[9] has been seen as capturing "the symbolic birth of landrights".[1]
He returned to the Herald in 1979, before becoming a
freelance photographer in 1986, working for such agencies as the
National Geographic Society.
In 1991 he had his first
solo exhibition, In Dreams: Mervyn, Thirty Years of Photography 1960 to 1990, at the
Australian Centre for Photography. Originally
curated by
Tracey Moffatt, it went on to tour for over 10 years. A book titled In Dreams was published to accompany the exhibition.[6]
He produced a one-man performance piece, Flash Blak, in the vein of a
William Yang slide show to music and written and directed by Yang, for the 2004
Message Sticks Festival at the
Sydney Opera House.[5] His aim in the show was to delve "into his family's history to illuminate a wider story about Aboriginal life in the latter half of the 20th century".[5] He also worked as a stills photographer on
Phillip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence.[citation needed]