From the 1930s to the 1950s anthropologist Norman Tindale travelled Australia taking photos of Aboriginals, part of a project to record a 'dying race.'
Indigenous artist Vernon Ah Kee has reclaimed and reframed Tindale's original project by creating powerful images, some of his own forebears.
We also take a look at the story of another unwilling portrait subject, the Irish nationalist political prisoner James Wilson, who escaped from prison in Western Australia.
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Fiona Gruber is a journalist and producer, writing, commentating and making radio about the arts in Australia and the UK. Follow her on twitter @fionagruber.
Angus Trumble is director of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Prior to this he spent eleven years as curator then senior curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art in the United States. He is the author of several publications including A Brief History of the Smile (2003) and The Finger, a Handbook (2010). Angus’s postcards on portraits are here.
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