Self-portrait as Paul Foelsche
2023
- Medium
- type C print
- Measurements
- (42.0 × 32.9 cm)
- Place/s of Execution
- Darwin, Northern Territory
- Accession Number
- 2024.637
- Department
- First Nations Australia
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, NGV Supporters of First Nations Art, 2024
© Gary Lee - Gallery location
- Gallery 10
Level 2, NGV Australia - About this work
-
With a meticulously staged mise en scène, Lee reveals with this self-portrait the capacity for photography to meddle with identity. Here he replicates a photographic self-portrait by Paul Foelsche (1831–1914), a German-Australian photographer whose anthropological approach to the medium saw him capture images of Lee’s ancestors. Foelsche was also the first police superintendent of the rapidly growing Palmerston precinct. Sitting as Foelsche, Lee recognises the tension between the colonial archive and his desire to celebrate Larrakia beauty.