Images, history and invention – that’s the title of an event coming up on Monday 14 July at the National Library of Australia in Canberra, and I have been invited to speak at it in my capacity as a Flickr photographer, archivist and contributor to Picture Australia.

“Join image makers and picture curators in conversation on their passion for image collections. View a DVD of works produced by creative Australians and from the collections of museums, galleries, libraries and archives across the country. Find out about the collective image network that makes up Picture Australia and the opportunities for you to contribute.”

6.30 pm, Monday 14 July 2008
National Library of Australia
Screening: LG1 Theatre
Parkes Place, Canberra

Free entry
Bookings essential: 02 6262 1271

The event is part of the Vivid National Photography Festival. Once I’ve given the talk I hope to reflect on things in writing here (reader, live in hope).

I was most pleased yesterday to receive an email from the content manager of the new National Sports Museum, based at Melbourne’s iconic MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground), seeking permission to use this image, Exit this way for MCG, in an exhibition at the new museum. She had found the image through Flickr.

It was taken on a cold Melbourne Friday last May, the 19th, 5.46pm at Richmond Station, looking back toward the city skyline, with the MCG in the background. I had 14 minutes to wait for the Alamein train, made bearable by having the camera. I loathe using and relying on public transport in Melbourne to get to work. Possibly the best thing for me about being on maternity leave (at the moment, when life is fairly exhausting and mostly joyless at home with a new baby) is not having to commute. Although conversely I have in the last year or so taken much inspiration from public transport in my photography, and one of my favourite subjects is Burwood Station, captured in the series Off the rails. The city end exits of Richmond Station are only open when major events are on at the MCG. That Friday Melbourne were playing Hawthorn. I love the vibe of Friday night football in the city, and miss that too about no longer being a city-based worker.

The museum opens in March 2008.

I saw a photograph of a child in one of my Flickr contact’s photostreams yesterday, and commented that she looked so much like him. He replied, ‘I never tire of hearing she looks like me’. It reminded me of this musing on family photographs …

The first time I visited my husband’s homeland (Mauritius), I wanted to see his family photographs. It is a part of knowing and understanding someone; a link with a part of their life that will always be foreign to you.

Because my father ran a photographic business as a sideline during my childhood, our childhood was much photographed and documented. Photographs are a great aide memoire, and I have a stash of these images safe in a special acid-free box.

I wanted to see the childhood of my husband, but there were no photographs. I will not be able to go back and compare my husband’s baby face with those of the children we hope to have (edit: I read that now and weep).

I see this with my sister’s children. When younger, my nephew Julian looked more to me like his paternal uncle than his father, but baby photos of his father and his father’s four siblings reveal multiple likenesses to all five Russos at certain ages. Family, like shadows from clouds, shift and dance across the child’s face.

I am the spitting image, as a child, of my mother, as a child, whereas my sister is not. Delving further back into photographs from the paternal side, I see that my sister could almost be my great-aunt Eileen reincarnated (what makes the connection more telling is the fact Eileen was a nurse, who served in the First World War, and my sister is a nurse too).

But these shadows of self, for me, stop here.