Profile: Mervyn Bishop

When I join the video call to speak to famed Aboriginal photographer Mervyn Bishop, his biographer Tim Dobbyn has bad news to share: Mervyn’s in hospital.

He’s ok, and despite the hospital setting, he’s still keen to talk. It's also fair to say there’s plenty to cover.

Now a sprightly 80 years old, Mervyn’s history with photography spans nearly seven decades, from when he first started experimenting with his mum’s box brownie as a young man growing up in the little town of Brewarrina, on the Barwon River in Northwest NSW.

His path – from his early days as a press photographer at the Sydney Morning Herald, to his time with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, back to the world of journalism, teaching, and eventually (and perhaps reluctantly) into the art world – traces a remarkable career that has produced some of Australia’s most iconic images of the past 50 years.

And yet while there was a career retrospective, In Dreams, in 1991, and further exhibitions through the 2000s, the tellings of his story have often touched lightly on his origins and personal journey. Until now.

So, with the announcement of a new exhibition of his work at the State Library of NSW, alongside a new book, Black, White and Colour, we decided it was a good time to sit down with the legend, and his biographer, to hear his story.

From little things

“I always sorta fancied taking photographs,” explains Mervyn. Despite the smalltown upbringing, his family were comfortable, if not overly wealthy.

Both his father and grandfather before him worked on sheep stations, and the family were well known and liked in Brewarrina.

It was his mum, Marjorie, herself a keen amateur photographer, who first realised her son had a talent for image-making.

At the age of 11 he “borrowed” her box brownie, that iconic camera that was the gateway for so many young photographers, and shot a whole roll of film at the Brewarrina aerodrome during the floods.

Apparently, Marjorie was not overly impressed when the film was developed to find picture after picture of aircraft. “But I like them,” was Mervyn’s defence.

With his mother’s blessing his interest in photography was nurtured, something that didn’t pass unnoticed by Vic King, an Englishman who worked for the shire council.

Vic’s kids went to school with Mervyn and had a small photography business he ran on the side. He took the budding photographer under his wing.

“Inside the house he’d converted one of the rooms to a darkroom,” Mervyn recalls.

“I was just amazed working in there, watching a print come up in the developer, fixing it. I was hooked.”

At the same time, Mervyn had been saving his money earned from mowing lawns and cashing in drink bottles for a sixpence each and was able to buy his first camera: a Japanese Acon 35 rangefinder for 15 pounds – a lot of money in 1956.

Between that camera, a basic projector, and a sheet thrown up over a washing line as a screen, Mervyn would hold exhibitions in the backyard.

The Herald

This early experimentation eventually led to his first big break – the opportunity to apply to be a cadet photographer at the Sydney Morning Herald in April 1963.

At this point he’d already left Brewarrina for the bright lights of Sydney and was working at the ABC as an errand boy, doing a bit of everything.

He arrived for his interview with acting photographic manager Fred Halmarick at the SMH armed with a handful of his colour slides in his bag. 

“Fred was a bit gruff in his way, but that didn’t worry me,” recalls Mervyn.

The slides were put up on a light box and declared as pretty good. After a few questions about his knowledge of photography, he was asked to go and make a few prints in the darkroom. Those nights in Vic King’s darkroom had paid off.

He was hired.

It was this time at the Herald that would also go on to define Mervyn’s photography.

As he says in Black, White and Colour, “My photography is based in the newspaper world”. In the evenings he received a formal photographic education at Sydney Technical College that was largely studio based, while during the day the new cadet was expected to do grunt work in the darkroom.

And despite much of his early field work at the Herald spent being a ‘bag carrier’ for more senior photographers on the payroll, he was able to absorb plenty from watching how they worked.

Over time he would photograph everything from breaking news to social events for the lifestyle pages and all manner of other subjects, including celebrities and newsmakers of the day. This grounding would prove vital to his capture of the iconic front-page shot Life and Death Dash in 1971 (see above).

The image won the Press Photographer of the Year Award that same year.

The image also marked a turning point in his career as a news photographer in more ways than one. His work was being recognised, but he also realised he’d hit a glass ceiling at the Herald. It was time to move on.

To Canberra

Encouraged by his wife Elizabeth, Mervyn started work at the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in Canberra in 1974. Created by Gough Whitlam’s Labour-party government, the department was formed at the start of an important era in Indigenous self-determination. Mervyn’s job was to cover the major developments in Aboriginal communities throughout Australia.

Even for an experienced news photographer, the job presented plenty of challenges. But he adapted quickly, helped of course by his warmth and empathy.

“I had to be respectful of photographing people in dire circumstances, and there would be times where I wouldn’t take photos as well. If people were ashamed, or unhappy, I wouldn’t photograph them,” he said.

Despite always trying to position himself “down the middle of the fence” politically, he was also convinced his imagery could bring change.

“I might photograph someone living in a run-down house, and I’d say to them that this image could make a difference to their situation. And in some cases it did,” he recalls.

Mervyn’s time at the Department would lead to many of the images that he’s probably most well-known for, but none more so than his image of Vincent Lingiari and Gough Whitlam, an image that became a powerful symbol of indigenous land rights (see page 34).

By 1979 he was ready to move again. Mervyn, Elizabeth and their young son Tim left Canberra in 1979 for Sydney, where he found himself, regretfully, back at the Herald. This time was challenging.

By now he’d changed as a photographer and as is explained in detail in Black, White and Colour, his heart wasn’t really in the news world anymore.

At the same time, health issues in 1984, and the birth of his daughter Rosemary a year later, had shifted his priorities. When I ask him about this period, he puts it simply – “I was there too long.”

The later years

By the latter part of 1986 Mervyn had left the Herald, and would later begin teaching photography at Tranby College, an Aboriginal education centre in the inner-Sydney suburb of Glebe.

This period helped revitalise his photography, as he bumped up against the art world and the stories of Aboriginal communities that ebbed and flowed in the city.

At the same time, his earlier work was being re-assessed as having artistic value alongside historic value, something that fed into the exhibition In Dreams in 1991. The exhibition would eventually tour 17 venues in Australia, and catapult Mervyn to widespread recognition.

But it would be always overshadowed by the death of his wife Elizabeth on the day it opened. She had been battling cancer since 1989.

The remainder of the 90s were particularly tough, and he describes his working experience in the period immediately after In Dreams as just “scratching around”.

There were freelancing opportunities, but these could be sporadic. In time, a relationship with the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre would develop, and he later worked as a stills photographer on the film Rabbit-Proof Fence.

In 2000, he received the Red Ochre Award, given by the Australia Council for lifetime achievement in the arts by an Indigenous person.

The early 2000s saw a live narrated slideshow in collaboration with William Yang called Flash Blak, and later Access All Areas in 2006. But by 2012, and nearing his 70s, Mervyn’s career was coming to an end, closing out with a quartet of joined images for Bungaree: The First Australian and a Sydney elders commission from the Australian Museum.

A revision

Despite a long and storied career, Mervyn is best remembered for his work recording the rising visibility of Indigenous people. But focusing only on that tells just part of the story of his remarkable career and impact on Australian photography, says biographer and journalist Tim Dobbyn.

A family friend from Mervyn’s childhood, Tim finally persuaded Mervyn to allow him to write a book about his life, starting in 2016. Black, White and Colour took the pair nine years to complete.

“Mervyn is celebrated these days as an Indigenous photographer of Indigenous subjects, but he covered a huge range – this is a guy who photographed [famed royal photographer] Cecil Beaton – white people, Asian people, everyone!

The reality is he’s just a good photographer, and I think that’s sometimes forgotten,” Tim says.

The hope is that their new book will change all that. ❂