curate:

materialworld: Their swimsuits were DIY. This photo made a huge impression on me as a kid. It was extremely rare, in 1970’s Queensland, to see women in the ultra-macho beach culture depicted as anything but sleaze and cheese sexual tourist bait, much less to see Aboriginal women represented in news or art at all - beyond poverty porn and horrible racist ‘noble savage kitsch’ art. That they looked young, happy and beautiful in their ‘home’ sewn bathers too = I was really shocked to see a reflection of the reality and people I knew having been made at all, back then.

via Axel Poignant  Mrs Ruby Rose, who lives in Derby, Western Australia, is one of the Croker Island girls photographed by Axel Poignant in 1948, as reported in a previous post. She’s the gal on the far right in the AP photograph. Ruby was also one of the “Stolen Generation” elders who was invitied to Canberra to witness the Prime Minister’s “Sorry” speech. Axel’s photograph has become another part of Ruby’s unique archive – the fortunate consequence of not living in Darwin at the time of Cyclone Tracey!

(via garconniere)