He photographed Whitlam and Lingiari. Now he wants to play golf with Trump

3 days ago 2

Gough Whitlam pours red earth through Vincent Lingiari’s hands. Paul Keating stands in Redfern and says, “we committed the murders”. A nurse runs through the streets of Darlinghurst with a three-year-old boy accidentally poisoned in a dash of life and death.

The images have shaken and shaped Australia. The man who captured them, photographer Mervyn Bishop, is a groundbreaking force in his own right as the first Indigenous professional photographer. It all started in Brewarrina at the age of 10 with a Box Brownie and shows of 35mm slides projected onto a sheet strung up on the clothesline.

Mervyn Bishop, Australia’s first Aboriginal press photographer, at Redfern Park where he witnessed then-prime minister Paul Keating’s famous speech. Bishop has donated his archive to the State Library of NSW, which is holding an exhibition from Saturday.

“They came in for nothing but it cost money to get out,” Bishop says of the backyard picture shows. “Mum used to make cakes, patty cakes, and put on a cup of tea.”

The experience is replicated in spirit at a State Library of NSW exhibition opening on Saturday. The library has acquired Bishop’s 55-year archive, and has presented not only his famous images and images of the famous (Jimmy Little, Roy Orbison, Mick Jagger) but family snaps dear to him.

The exhibition also features a replica of his former Sydney home, photographic equipment, and one room is dedicated to projecting digitised highlights from the collection.

Bishop’s award-winning 1971 photograph “Life and death dash” was on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald.

Then-prime minister Gough Whitlam pours soil into the hand of traditional landowner Vincent Lingiari, Wave Hill Station, NT, 1975.

Paul Keating in Redfern Park, December 10, 1992.

“It makes me feel wonderful, going back and having a look at photos of me in particular, when I was a little boy,” he says, breaking into song while cataloguing folders of loose ends such as “Christmas, Dubbo, 1999,” the trailblazing University of New England chancellor Pat O’Shane at a graduation ceremony, birthday parties and son Tim’s athletics trophies.

He flicks through a copy of his biography, by friend and retired journalist Tim Dobbyn, and pauses on a photo of his cousins wagging school in 1966, calling it his favourite.

He has not stopped taking photographs since falling in love with the smell of the chemicals and magic of watching an image take shape in a dark room, although the Nikon on the desk in front of him is digital.

Bishop has a knack for being in the right place and an easy rapport with people, but says it’s important to “keep your thoughts to yourself” and mimes swerving left and right.

He does not mind sharing his thoughts on US President Donald Trump: “I think he’s wonderful. Not because he plays golf. I’d like to go and have a game with him on one of his golf courses.

“I haven’t played for a couple of years, I’ve had a few illnesses.”

Bishop won an award for a front-page Herald photograph capturing a boy’s dash to hospital. He had his own recently, when the Royal Flying Doctor Service took him to Dubbo, where he was “wobbly”, then to Sydney where he developed blood poisoning.

“Things weren’t going real good. I didn’t know where I was. If it wasn’t for my daughter Rosemary ... she got up someone and chased them up. I was on a drip and I got poisoned. Septicemia. Not many come back after that.”

The exhibition at the State Library of NSW opens to the public on Saturday. Tim Dobbyn’s biography of Bishop, Black, White + Colour (Ginninderra Press), is out now.