Former Herald photographer who took iconic Indigenous referendum image dies

Former Sydney Morning Herald photographer George Lipman, whose image of two boys walking hand in hand captured the country’s optimism ahead of the 1967 Indigenous rights referendum, has died at the age of 91.

The Walkley Award winner’s photo of Indigenous boy Victor Hookey walking with his white friend Mark Anthony on a Chippendale lane ran on the front page of the Herald two days before the referendum vote under the headline: “Racial discrimination – what’s that?”

Victor Hookey (left) and Mark Anthony holding hands in a photo used on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald ahead of the 1967 referendum, and (right) George Lipman in 1978.

More than 90 per cent of voters endorsed changing the constitution at the referendum so Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would be counted as part of the population.

Lipman’s photo – just one of his insightful images of city life over almost three decades – was hung in exhibitions and featured on posters before becoming topical again two years ago.

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The image was on the Herald’s front page for a second time ahead of the Indigenous Voice referendum in 2023.

As Hookey remembered it then, Lipman spotted the boys walking hand in hand and asked if he could take a photograph of them in Edward Lane, Chippendale.

Lipman was part of a gun Herald team that covered news, political, social, cultural and sporting events in the era of monochrome photography.

His many other memorable photos included capturing comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello clowning around when they arrived at Mascot Airport in 1955, a returned serviceman and a young boy sharing a moment on Anzac Day in 1963, screaming fans at a Rolling Stones concert at Sydney Showground in 1965 and a worker suspended from a helicopter above the Australia Square construction site in 1969.

After leaving the Herald, Lipman became a publican at the Cat & Fiddle Hotel in Balmain.

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