Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains images of and references to deceased people.
Barbara McGrady clearly remembers the first time she set eyes on Indigenous actress Rosalie Kunoth-Monks.
At the then-segregated picture theatre in her tiny hometown of Mungindi, which straddles the Queensland-New South Wales border some 500 kilometres from Brisbane, Barbara watched Kunoth-Monks' starring performance in the 1955 movie Jedda - the first film to feature an Aboriginal woman in a leading role. From the hard seats at the front of the theatre, 10-year-old Barbara never imagined that one day years later she would photograph Kunoth-Monks in Redfern, at an event honouring the Stolen Generations. "Seeing a young black woman in a big role like that was unreal," Barbara reflects now. "It made a big impression on me."
Actress turned activist Kunoth-Monks is just one of countless celebrated Aboriginal figures whom Barbara has photographed in a career spanning close to six decades. As a photojournalist she has covered hundreds of sporting, social and cultural events, putting Aboriginal people front and centre in her work. She's worked for National Indigenous Television, the NRL, the AFL, Title Fight Boxing and a host of Aboriginal-led organisations. The opening of her 2022 exhibition Deadly Sports Heroes in Glebe was attended by Ash Barty, Anthony Mundine, Greg Inglis and Jonathan Thurston. The Australian Museum holds a collection of her works, and the University's Chau Chak Wing Museum showcased her archive in its exhibition Australia has a Black History.
Black Lives Matter rally, Sydney (2015). Photo: Barbara McGrady.
The call of photography came to Barbara when she was a young girl. "My father worked for a white property owner who gave us magazines like Time, Life and National Geographic," she recalls. "I'd see these great images of African-American people and think, 'Where are the great images of Aboriginal people?' That planted a seed. I thought, 'I could do that.' And so I did."
Barbara's lifelong pride as a Gomeroi-Gamilliray woman fuelled a need to show her people through a black lens. Growing up surrounded by a large, proud mob in the border town of Mungindi, Brisbane, she lived in two states and learned that her people lived in two worlds. "We still practised our customs and traditions, and my parents spoke Gomeroi," she recalls, adding poignantly, "but not in public, of course, because we weren't allowed to."
Combined with a desire to see more images of her own people, Barbara's love of sport steered her to the camera. She was a runner, basketball player and sports captain at Mungindi Central School. "I saw sports photography, especially of contact sports, as an extension of that," she says. Rugby league is the sport she most enjoys photographing. "Just about every cousin, second cousin and brother [she has six] of mine played rugby league. Aboriginal men and women are very good at it, and that's what I love. I also love AFL and boxing."
Living in the Sydney suburb of Glebe since 1972 has allowed Barbara to comprehensively capture the recent history of nearby Redfern, a hub of Aboriginal activism in Australia. This work has brought her both joy and pain. She photographed a victorious Redfern All Blacks women's rugby team victory with the same passion as she captured the 2004 riots following the death of Aboriginal teenager TJ Hickey after an altercation with police. "I've always thought there was a need to tell our stories, covering things like the big marches and the bicentennial in '88, in our way," she says.
Living a ten-minute walk from the Camperdown Campus has also helped Barbara to forge a bond with the University of Sydney. She frequented on-campus public talks and protests long before she enrolled in 2004 as a student of sociology and Indigenous studies. With good friends who had studied at Sydney and gone on to become lecturers, Barbara often sat in on those friends' lectures before becoming a student herself.
The University's Koori Centre, which provided assistance and support to Indigenous students at that time, was another drawcard. "The Koori Centre was a great meeting place, and the University has always been a place I've felt comfortable in,' Barbara says. 'I love the grounds."
Barbara continued working as a photojournalist both during and after her studies. Her degree, she says, helped her to see the world more clearly, and after graduating she felt better able to articulate what she was trying to achieve through photography. "I looked at things in a different way by learning more about the world and how it operates," she reflects. "It's something I feel I need to do, for others to see the world the way I see it."
It's a perspective Chau Chak Wing Museum director Michael Dagostino embraced when the museum asked Barbara if it could exhibit her work. "Barbara's unique perspective on historic events has empowered her communities, particularly Redfern," Michael says. "Her archive, spanning decades, is an astounding record, and her work as one of the country's first female Aboriginal documentary photographers has laid the groundwork for conversations now happening across Australia."
Indigenous Women's All Stars rugby league, Newcastle (2016). Photo: Barbara McGrady.
Barbara herself adds: "My photos are not just Indigenous photos of Indigenous people - they are images for all of Australia's historical peoples and events throughout history. As a longtime photojournalist, I see my images as stories of time and place, of culture and community in the public domain."
Chronic illness has slowed Barbara physically, but she still manages to photograph AFL games, and remains an "angry black woman". She speaks softly but with a fiery glint in her eye. She chooses her words with care, and laughs easily. "I'm more Malcolm X than Martin Luther King," she says. "But I love them both. I'm an old activist. I don't know how as a blackfella you can't be."
"I believe if you tell people your story and your cultural connections and the way you feel about who you are as a person and this land, their attitude changes, and they learn something," Barbara observes. "That's why I put my stories out there - because I'm proud of who we are as a people, and how we have survived and thrived regardless."
A friendship forged in controversy
When Matchbox 20 lead singer Rob Thomas made an insensitive joke about black people and alcohol that was perceived as fuelling racist stereotypes at a 2016 Melbourne concert, Barbara McGrady joined those calling him out on social media.
"Want to really make amends for your hurtful, ignorant and derogatory comments to what I gather to be a mainly white audience?" she wrote. "Well then invite me to come photograph one of your Sydney shows."
The US rock musician, who was keen to apologise and learn more about Aboriginal culture and history, responded: "Please follow me on Twitter so that we can message each other and arrange to meet."
"We had a talk about it," Barbara recalls now, "and he told me to come and photograph his concert at the Sydney Opera House. From then on, he started reading up about Aboriginal people, we became good friends - and now he calls me 'Aunty Barb'."
Written by Jocelyn Prasad for Sydney Alumni Magazine . Photography by Barbara McGrady and John Janson-Moore.
