About me…
as a photographer…
After completing university in the mid-1970s, I moved to London, where I began working as a freelance photographer for community organisations and small feminist publications. As I became more successful, my photographs were used in a variety of publications including The New Statesman, The Guardian, Time Out and The British Journal of Photography. Freelance photography is the perfect career choice for anyone accustomed to moving frequently. It follows the same learned pattern – we arrive, we do the job and then we depart.
As my career had just begun to take off in London, it was with some trepidation that I moved to Sydney, Australia, in 1982. But I found that I was able to establish my career there and over the next few years, I worked as the official photographer for The Festival of Sydney, The Sydney Biennale and the Sydney Women’s Festival. I also had photographs featured in The Australian, Vogue Australia and other publications.
a curator…
In addition to my love of photography, it was my interest in women’s issues that led to my work as a curator. With three other women, I curated and exhibited in the successful multimedia exhibition Women’s Images of Men at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1981). The exhibition was reviewed in every major national newspaper and the powerful public reaction to the exhibition taught me that art and art exhibitions can be a catalyst for important political conversations.
After moving to Australia, I continued to curate exhibitions. The first major exhibition that I curated was Stills Alive, which celebrated a century of Australian film and film photographers. This exhibit was made possible with support from the National Film & Sound Archive. After moving to Melbourne, I curated the first exhibition of contemporary Victorian photography, The Thousand Mile Stare, which opened at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and achieved one of the highest attendances records in the history of the gallery.
In 2016, I was appointed Senior Curator at Melbourne’s Museum of Chinese Australian History where I organised and curated a range of contemporary art and museum-style exhibitions. In this role, I worked as part of the Multicultural Museums Victoria group on a series of exhibitions to celebrate grandmothers in different cultures. This inaugural project won a prestigious Museums Australia award.
a writer and other roles…
Moving internationally four times has tested my newcomer survival skills. Fortunately, words and images can surmount different time zones and cultural shifts. As my curatorial career progressed, I found myself writing more and contributing catalogue essays and articles to accompany my photographs. After moving to Seattle, Washington, in 1999, I continued to write and contributed articles for The Seattle Times and the University of Washington Libraries’ publications.
Diversity and social equity remained important to me. While working at the University Libraries, I led a range of major projects including the award winning photography exhibition Shadows of a Fleeting World about a group of immigrant Japanese photographers living in Seattle before WWII. Together with South Asian Librarian Deepa Banerjee, we initiated Roots and Reflections, the first book on the South Asian experience in the Pacific Northwest. I also led the award-winning documentary film project Grays Harbor Happenings.
The Newcomer’s Dictionary is my first book.