Abstract:
Images in-between history and memory from the north-west Pilbara.
On the Power of Images
There is a point at which words no longer seem to affect us. Some things are too deeply embedded in our imagination of a place or event, and some topics have been spoken and written of so much that listening and reading no longer enlighten. In such cases language loses the ability to inform and images become much more powerful and articulate mediums for interrogating our knowledge of the world. Perhaps the most vivid of such images are those whose emotional impact precedes intellectual analysis – images that are evocative through their sentience and by virtue of their fundamental connection with humanity. Such images can create a space for the emergence of emotions before the structures of discourse have their effect, drawing the viewer into the histories and memories of those they seek to represent and establishing a visual connection to the themes at hand. These qualities lie at the heart of ‘Yindjibarndi Landscapes’, images of Yindjibarndi people in country, which articulate something about fundamental relationships between people and the environments in which they live.
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