Michelle Blakeney

Michelle Blakeney is a Yaegl woman from the Far North Coast of New South Wales. She has been a photographer for several years, and her continuing passion and ambition is to document her own people's unique culture and history through photography. It is this healing power of photography that fuels her love of the medium. Currently a resident of Sydney, Michelle branched out from her photographic practice to encompass screen-based practice.

A LOT OF LOST SURVIVORS

In 2008, the 100 Year Anniversary of The Bomaderry Aboriginal Children’s Home was held for the families. Michelle Blakeney held an exhibition combining contemporary artwork and old photographic slides from 1950-1970’s. Aboriginal families are only now recovering members from forced separations; photography provides a link from the past to the present that is immediate and powerful. It’s sharing a family history and re-connecting a lost bond. Photographs have been an amazing tool in the reuniting of family members keen to re-establish ties broken so many years prior. Blakeney recognized the power these images would have for the families of the children raised in the home.

an experimental digital story by Michelle Blakeney.