In 2023, I received a grant from Magnum Foundation and the World Monuments Fund to work with the Survivors of the Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home in Kempsey, NSW, a state-run institution that kidnapped and housed hundreds of Aboriginal boys between 1924 and 1970. Here, the boys' names weren’t used. They were assigned a number.

Sitter and Dhungutti man Uncle Harry Ritchie #56 shared this story:

“I didn’t learn anything about Aboriginality. We were taught to be white in there, you know what I mean? Taught to be white, and don’t mix with blackfullas in school. I lost my culture… more or less, my identity…I knew nothing when I got out of Kinchela. When I went to Mum’s in Armidale, I cried to go back to Kinchela, because that’s all I knew. That was my home, you know?”