Stories within stories
Aboriginal photographer Ricky Maynard has been documenting the lives of Indigenous people and their communities, mainly in his home state of Tasmania, since the 1980s. His work is in many major public galleries, archives and private collections. He received the Mother Jones International Documentary Award in 1994 and the Australian Human Rights Award for Photography in 1997. His latest series of photos, Saddened Were the Hearts of Many Men, was exhibited at Stills gallery in Sydney in March/April.
Here he talks about that exhibition, his career in general and his commitment to the ‘true richness’ photography can have.
How did you initially become interested in photography?
I’ve always said that photography came to me, because I left high school at 16, travelled from Tasmania to Melbourne and answered an advert in the paper for a darkroom assistant in a big printing house. I took to the whole magical photographic process like a duck to water and very quickly realised it was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
The printing house did all the aerial mapping in Victoria. We worked with rolls of 10x8 film
