Believe, Honourable Mention, Tokyo Foto Awards, 2025

Sharna Southwell is a human rights activist who uses cosplay to challenge war-driven profiteering. By embodying idealised feminine characters, she reclaims them to promote justice, compassion, and human dignity. Her work exposes how beauty and consumerism are used to distract from war and suffering. Blending activism, artifice, and authenticity, her portrait invites reflection on resistance and the role of personal conviction in confronting global indifference.

Towards Collective Liberation, Bronze Award, Tokyo Foto Awards

This portrait of photographer John Janson-Moore (centre, with camera) was made amidst the 300,000-strong March for Humanity across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in August 2025. It wasn’t until I reviewed my images in post-production that I found him there - in the thick of it as he so often is. His constant presence at marches and rallies embodies the principles of Photographers Without Borders. Storytelling in solidarity, not supremacy, it is a portrait made in the spirit of bearing witness together.

KBH Survivors Portraits, Amaze Gallery, SLNSW

The Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation was started in 2003 to support the now senior men (Uncles) associated with the former institution.

Sydney-based photographer Sarah Barker Photographer has taken some beautifully evocative black-and-white photos of the men at their various reunion events over the years.

Paulette Whitton, a daughter of the late Kinchela Uncle Paul Whitton (KBH no. 31), was commissioned by the Library to record some of the men's oral histories during 2017-19.

Their stories are ongoing.

On display in the Amaze Gallery of The State Library of New South Wales until Oct 2025.

Eureka

Finalist, Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture

Photographers in Isolation

Since God's good world began,
Not God but godless man
Made barrier and ban,
And reared each frontier wall.
Brothers, when shall we see
Selfless democracy?

- Oodgeroo Noonuccal, from White Australia

The AUSWIP Directory

The AUSWIP Directory featuring established female and non-binary Australian photographers was launched on International Women's Day.

https://www.auswip.com.au/directory

π˜›π˜©π˜¦ π˜ˆπ˜œπ˜šπ˜žπ˜π˜— π˜‹π˜ͺ𝘳𝘦𝘀𝘡𝘰𝘳𝘺 highlights recent work and makes it simple for visitors to connect directly with each artist, linking their websites and social media accounts to their public profiles.

Empty nest

We watched her grow up.
She was the urgent chirper,
Fledgling flier.
And when spring rolled
Out its green
She’d grown
Into the most noticeable
Bird-girl.
Long-legged and just
The right amount of blush
Tipping her wings, crest
And tail, and
She knew it
In the bird parade.
We watched her strut.
She owned her stuff.
The males perked their armor, greased their wings,
And flew sky-loop missions
To show off
For her.
In the end
There was only one.
Isn’t that how it is for all of us?
There’s that one you circle back to β€” for home.
This morning
The young couple scavenges seeds
On the patio.
She is thickening with eggs.
Their minds are busy with sticks the perfect size, tufts of fluff
Like dandelion, and other pieces of soft.
He steps aside for her, so she can eat.
Then we watch him fill his beak
Walk tenderly to her and kiss her with seed.
The sacred world lifts up its head
To notice β€”
We are double-, triple-blessed.

- Redbird Love
by Joy Harjo