The Last Laugh: The Agency of Alternative Aesthetics in the Work of Contemporary Australian Indigenous Women Photographers

In a 1995/2004, work entitled Last Laughs, Destiny Deacon 'amateurishly' captures a trio of flash, young, 'laughing' women of 'ambiguous' racial background playing up for the camera. The social and political challenge of this image establishes a standpoint position of photographic practice that reflects the work of other contemporary Australian Indigenous women photographers and indicates a continuum of practice that includes positions of reconciliation and diplomacy, confrontation, humor and parody. In their process of returning the colonial gaze, reframing and reinterpreting the archives and history of aboriginal photography and generating alternative information about aboriginality, the photographers often invent and employ alternative aesthetics in their work. Such alternative aesthetics often reflect an Aboriginal perspective based on a circular, non-linear sense of time and narrative, which dislodges assumed photographic values and provides agency for active viewing - viewing that demands a change of perception. This paper gives an overview of a decade of photography by Indigenous Australian women that illustrates their operational practices.