Empty lands: contemporary art approaches to photographing historical trauma in Tasmania

Abstract

In the recent artworks by Ricky Maynard and Anne Ferran both artists present series of black and white photographs about traumatic histories. The photographs document sites found in Tasmania, Australia, which are significant to the state's colonial history: the experiences and repercussions of the so-called Black War and the operation of Female Factories. Rather than represent these events directly, the artworks depict the landscapes as they appear in the present moment, often devoid of obvious markers to the historical subject. Drawing on the postmodern criticism of documentary photography and on trauma theory, this article explores how contemporary photographic practices come to represent traumatic histories—what is being pictured and how. Similar to artists in other parts of the world who photograph sites in the aftermath of historical events, Ferran and Maynard capture an emptiness that produces both critical and memorial functions. The materiality of the emptiness is important and particular to the production of history in Tasmania. By documenting these sites, the artists show how this production has occurred not only in books or images but also in the land itself.