“The daguerreotype possesses an alchemical quality - a proximity to base materials that many contemporary photographic processes lack. Copper and silver… are extracted from the earth through mining; the sun’s light is needed to expose the images. If the daguerreotype is where the earth meets the sun and the sky, then it is the perfect medium to reclaim Country and to decolonise it.”
-Leigh Robb
‘Where the Earth meets the Sun’ explores the relationship between the land of Australia’s First Peoples and the extraction of minerals by colonial mining industry workers to make daguerreotypes.
The daguerreotype was invented in 1839 and was the first commercial photographic process. Its evolution coincided with the expansion of mining in the colonies. Copper, silver, salt and gold are used to make a daguerreotype. Since the establishment of the colony of South Australia, the mining industry has exploited these resources, found in and around Adelaide on Kaurna Country.
This series highlights this exploitation, as well as these minerals’ use in photography that documented the dispossession of Australia’s First Peoples and the devastation of their land. Each image depicts an early mining site on Kaurna Country and is both a record and a reclamation.
