A historical ethnography of photographs as a colonial tool and as re-appropriated by the indigenous population from the 1860s through the 1920s and in the present

An indigenous reservation in the colony of Victoria, Australia, the Coranderrk Aboriginal Station was a major site of cross-cultural contact the mid-nineteenth century and early twentieth. Coranderrk was located just outside Melbourne, and from its opening in the 1860s the colonial government commissioned many photographs of its Aboriginal residents. The photographs taken at Coranderrk Station circulated across the western world; they were mounted in exhibition displays and classified among other ethnographic “data” within museum collections. The immense Coranderrk photographic archive is the subject of this detailed, richly illustrated examination of the role of visual imagery in the colonial project. Offering close readings of the photographs in the context of Australian history and nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century photographic practice, Jane Lydon reveals how western society came to understand Aboriginal people through these images. At the same time, she demonstrates that the photos were not solely a tool of colonial exploitation. The residents of Coranderrk had a sophisticated understanding of how they were portrayed, and they became adept at manipulating their representations.

Lydon shows how the photographic portrayals of the Aboriginal residents of Coranderrk changed over time, reflecting various ideas of the colonial mission—from humanitarianism to control to assimilation. In the early twentieth century, the images were used on stereotypical postcards circulated among the white population, showing what appeared to be compliant, transformed Aboriginal subjects. The station closed in 1924 and disappeared from public view until it was rediscovered by scholars years later. Aboriginal Australians purchased the station in 1998, and, as Lydon describes, today they are using the Coranderrk photographic archive in new ways, to identify family members and tell stories of their own.

"“Eye Contact is . . . a welcome entrant into the interdisciplinary arena of material culture study intersecting with photographic history. It clears a path through a landscape of nostalgia littered with the pictorial histories and genres of illustrated then-and-now documentation. . . . [T]his book brings out this body of photographic work to sit within a soundly researched historical context, and provides useful discussions on the ways in which the photographs meanings were constructed for specific purposes.”" - History of Photography

"“Eye Contact is a fine contribution to visual history, colonial studies, and comparative work on visual culture and photography more broadly.”" - American Ethnologist

"“[A] rich verbal and visual text. . . . By tying colonial-era photography to the institutions within which it took place and historicizing the shifting contexts of composition, production, and distribution for the images themselves, Lydon’s beautifully produced monograph makes a significant contribution to understanding colonial photographic practice.”" - Anthropology and Humanism

"“I found Lydon’s book to be a resounding success: it is an enjoyable read; an important, well-timed contribution to the disciplinary fields of history, photography, and anthropology; and an especially welcome addition to scholarship that examines the power of media practices to produce and re-imagine meaning.”" - Visual Anthropology Review

"“This is a well written book, intelligently conceived and well argued. It is theoretically sophisticated while remaining accessible.”" - Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History

"“With its eye-catching cover, bold title and eighty-eight illustrations, Jane Lydon’s Eye Contact is an impressive scholarly work detailing the role that visual imagery, but particularly photography, played in developments at the Aboriginal mission at Coranderrer in Victoria from its beginnings in the 1870s to its closure in the early 1900s.”" - Australian Historical Studies

"Insightful. . . . The importance of Eye Contact goes beyond the recovery of aspects of untold Australian history, in that any consideration of the function of representation of Aboriginal people is a meditation on the nature of culture in Australia." - Melbourne Age

"The Coranderrk photographs perform seemingly contradictory roles; they are both 'memorials to a vanishing race' and a vital resource for contemporary indigenous people searching for their descendants in order to keep the past alive." - TLS