Diverse Beauty portrait series photographed at this years Brisbane Writer’s Festival.
From left to right Sonam from Tibet, Fahim from Afghanistan & Mary from Southern Sudan.

» Click here for a larger view.

For a beaut Father’s Day gift, we took my folks along to indigenous singer/songwriter Frank Yamma’s live show as part of this years Brisbane Festival. For those not familiar with Frank’s music, his heartfelt storytelling combines brutally honest tales of alcohol abuse, cultural degradation, respect and country. Regarded as one of Australia’s most important indigenous songwriters, Frank’s recent album Countryman received five star reviews. The following photographs I shot on the night. Thanks Frank for a great evening! Find out more about Frank’s music here.

Social documentary photographers Angela Blakely and David Lloyd are currently exhibiting at the Museum Of Brisbane. The exhibition surveys the collaboration of the two, whose work examines conflict and personal crisis both abroad and closer to home.

If you haven’t already passed by the gallery make the time to get down to MOB and witness for yourselves the power of visual story telling.

The stories we seek to tell are as much about us, the viewer and the social milieu in which the stories exist as they are about the subjects of those stories.

I met a woman today. Marcella told me what life was like for her during the genocide: watching her husband be killed, knowing her children were slaughtered; feeling the spear stab her pregnant abdomen. She related how “the neighbours, the militia and the soldiers came to kill us with guns, machetes and clubs”. What Marcella wouldn’t explain is how the woman were killed. She simply said it was “inappropriate”.

Blakely & Lloyd
Social Documentary Photography 1993 – 2010
12 August – 20 November 2011
Museum Of Brisbane