CAMERA OBSCURA
Having established a successful practice as a commercial photographer, Michael Cook took a giant leap of faith, channelling a passion for his Aboriginal ancestry into a new career as an artist.
Having established a successful practice as a commercial photographer, Michael Cook took a giant leap of faith, channelling a passion for his Aboriginal ancestry into a new career as an artist. In conversation with National Gallery of Victoria director Tony Ellwood AM, the now internationally acclaimed art photographer shares his motivations and inspirations.
Tony Ellwood: “Michael, I thought I’d start with your childhood. When was the first time you developed an interest in photography?” Michael Cook: “My brother gave me my first camera when I was 14 and I began taking photos all the time. My first full-time job was in a one-hour film processing laboratory. There was a studio on-site and, because I wanted to make extra money, I started shooting weddings on the weekends. That led me into wedding photography, which I did for about 20 years. In the early 1990s I also ran a makeover studio. Everyone was doing glamour but ours was a little different: we were doing images in a fashionable black-andwhite style. I was always fashion orientated, so even when we were doing weddings and portraits the aesthetic was different and edgy.” TE: “But did you do fashion work as well?” MC: “Yes, I did, just before I went into art photography. I did some folio work in New York, which taught me about working with fashion stylists, hairstylists and make-up artists. This taught me the process I needed to get my artwork to look the way I wanted it to look, to tell a story and to get depth within my work.” TE: “It’s about 2009 when you decide you want your work to be less about commercial photography and more about fine art. What was the trigger?”
MC: “I was adopted into a non-Indigenous family at birth, and I have always been interested in my Aboriginality. My mum always told me I was adopted and she was involved in fighting for Indigenous rights from the 1960s. The first Aboriginal person I ever met was Neville Bonner. He used to sit on our front balcony talking to my mum about getting into politics. I knew I needed to connect with the Aboriginal part of my identity and art was a way into that.”
TE: “It’s incredible; because of wanting to reconnect with your Aboriginal heritage you translated that into a whole new path and created this phenomenal career.”
MC: “I didn’t know it was going to take off like it did. I made a series called Through My Eyes where Aboriginal faces are overlaid on those of former Australian prime ministers. I rang the National Library and requested photographs of prime ministers from the past 100 years. Then I went out and photographed 27 different Aboriginal people “and started overlaying the faces. I was only going to do about seven but I did Bob Hawke first and it took only a few minutes! I realised his features are very similar to Aboriginal features. So I thought I’d do all
27 prime ministers and by the time I reached Paul Keating and others like him, who were the complete opposite (very European and long in the face), it took three months to finish the series.
“I didn’t know how to approach the industry, so I just started knocking on gallery doors. I did a few galleries in Sydney and then met Andrew Baker in Brisbane. At that stage I was still shooting weddings.
He said: ‘Give up all your other photography and promise me you’ll just work on art for the next 12 months and I will show your work.’ So that day I quit all non-art photography.” TE: “That’s a pretty brave thing to do. People often forget how brave artists are. You took a huge professional risk.”
MC: “Yes, I gave up all my income-producing work. Two weeks later Andrew invited me down to his gallery and four curators from the
National Gallery of Australia were there. They bought that body of work and Through My Eyes went straight into that and other institutional collections. The NGA also bought the next two entire series of my work, Undiscovered in 2010, and Broken Dreams in 2011.” TE: “And then I think I put you in the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 2012.”
MC: “Yes, it was a huge boost for my career to be included in such a prestigious international survey of contemporary art.” TE: “You dedicated yourself and within two to three years you’re shown in major institutions around the country in various different contexts. That’s a really phenomenal achievement for any emerging artist.”
MC: “I didn’t realise that until later in my career. I jumped in the deep end and didn’t really understand the art industry. The way I understand it now is that my upbringing is just one of many Aboriginal stories in Australia. It is reflected in the way I produce and present the work. I was adopted and brought up in a largely non-Indigenous community in a non-Indigenous family. My mum always explained things with a very broad, open mind. I think my work comes across in the same way. Perhaps that’s why the majority of people understand the work, because I produce a political message in an aesthetic that is beautiful. As a result I think I connect to my audience and people understand the narrative. I wasn’t taught hatred towards colonisation and white settlement. I do have
“I produce a political message in an aesthetic that is beautiful. As a result I connect to my audience and people understand the narrative”
an understanding and knowledge of our history. Mine is just one of the many ways that you can be brought up identifying as Indigenous in Australia. I’m not part of the Stolen Generation, but my situation is very close to that. When my mother adopted me, she was questioned by our local Aboriginal community about whether I was part of the Stolen Generation. I was born in the late 1960s and the Stolen Generation went on until the 1970s.”
TE: “There is still a political edge to your work. If I look at your series Civilised, for example, you’re talking about the four different nationalities that all came to Australia around the same time and you’re challenging us with exclusively Indigenous models. It’s pretty powerful.”
MC:
“Yeah. I ask the audience a lot of open questions in my work. They are questions about my own discoveries – it’s a way of educating myself about Australian history broadly, but also my own identity.”
TE: “And then you did the series Object, which you launched at the 2015 Venice Biennale. I remember there was a flurry of interest here in Australia and you found this wonderful sort of multiframework with a Venetian setting with Indigenous models. This series had a lot of beauty in it.”
MC:
“I knew it was going to be shown overseas, so I was reaching for a broader range, including slavery issues, some of which overlap with Australian history.”
TE: “And you’re talking about global slavery?” MC:
“Yes. There are little tags on the models borrowed from slave advertisements found in English and American newspapers from the 1800s. I removed the word ‘slave’ and changed it to the word for the object the model is replicating. Then it became about objectification; how you see people as subhuman, which is what happened to Aboriginal people up until the referendum.”
TE: “But then you go on to really empower the Indigenous figure when you create Majority Rule, where you create the repeated figure of one person and this person is saying: ‘Well, what if we were 96 per cent of the population?’ and: ‘Look at this very formal businesslike Indigenous figure dominating, in this case, the Canberra skyline.’”
MC:
“The concept for that series comes from growing up in the 1970s and not seeing ‘a majority’ of Aboriginal people going to and from work, or anywhere else, on a daily basis. They were definitely the minority by far. And even today, why is it such an unusual thing for people to see an Aboriginal person? I’m thinking about the population of only three or four per cent identifying as Aboriginal in Australia and the whole history which sits behind that.”
TE: “A lot of your work is about hope for Indigenous people. Can they be more present, more empowered, be role models. Is that a fair comment?”
MC:
“Yes. I see role models and education as an important way
forward. I am also developing empathy within my work so that people realise that where someone is positioned in society is simply a reflection of our history.”
TE: “The NGV has bought at least four series of your work and we’re always excited about where you are headed next. What’s your next big idea?”
MC:
“I’m shooting a series in Sydney at the moment without any people in it, which is the first time I’ve approached it in this way.”
TE: “No people?” MC:
“Yes, I had to find depth and meaning in the series without drawing on the persona of my models. My idea is drawn from the Renaissance, when paintings of exotic foods were a reflection of status in society. I am looking for the exotic within the work with a colonised skin over it. And with any series, you never know if it’s going to work until you get the first photo up on the screen. Then you know if you’re on a winner.”
TE: “What if it doesn’t work? Put people back in?” (Laughs) MC:
“Nothing ever runs to plan. You can always change direction along the way until it does. I usually have a good success rate, but have had a couple fail lately. As long as I create an idea with depth and spend some time to create the story line I know that a series will come together.”
TE: “But your career has been about a kind of informed trust in your own future and where it could end up. So I understand why those creative risks for you, generally speaking, are a very positive thing to do.”
MC:
“The budget keeps getting higher and higher. I have to learn that every series doesn’t have to be increasingly complex. I can get back to basics. It’s the idea, not the production, that creates a good body of work.
“The series Mother (2016) was supposed to be about the Stolen Generations in Australia, but it became a personal journey about adoption as well. I showed it first at Art Basel Hong Kong in 2016 and it was the first time ever that people didn’t ask me about my Aboriginality or the location or Australian history. Instead they told me a story about their own detachment from their parents or from family and how the series touched them personally. And I thought: ‘Wow, I’ve tapped into something global.’ People from Australia might understand it with a Stolen Generation view, but overseas, people understand it as individuals, from their own experiences.”
TE: “There’s a nice humanity to that, isn’t there? In terms of everyone in their own way identifying with a different history and often not a good one, but still it’s a history and it’s valid and brings community together.”
MC:
“My ideas for my future projects are to create different roads within the work that will connect globally with different communities. I think that the stories I tell from my own history come closer in a world that is connected.”