#3-2: Atong Atem

Atong Atem is an Australian-based photographer, originally of South Sudanese origin. In this series of work and in previous ones, she gathers together people of South Sudanese origin who are living in Australia. Historically, studio photography in Africa has taken two routes. In the early 20th century, studio portraits were often very fixed and formal, with African people sometimes depicted almost as a species apart.

Postwar, there was another history of African studio photography, where a range of photographers created exuberant images of African people, celebrating liberation after independence in Africa. The studio itself became a site of liberation and a place of exuberant celebration. Atong Atem merges these two traditions to create these strange, colorful, beguiling, mesmerizing portraits of South Sudanese people in Australia. In her lens, the studio and the camera become a site of transformation, the means and tools of personal change, turning something fixed into new figures, new possibilities, and new representations — what it might look like and feel like to be of African origin in Australia.