Mavis Phillips nee Walley was one of Australia’s earliest known Indigenous photographers. She grew up in Goomalling, in rural Western Australia, and started shooting in the 1930s using a simple cardboard camera called the box Brownie. The images in this collection share the happiest times of her life when her family lived and worked on a farm owned by a white family, protected from native welfare. But they were then moved to the Goomalling native eeserve where they were subject to Western Australia’s apartheid-style laws.
