© National Portrait Gallery 2024
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Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
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National Photographic Portrait Prize 2024 Finalist
Tace Stevens
Noongar/Spinifex
born Australia 1992
We Were Just Little Boys 2023
pigment photographic print on paper
‘In 2023, I received a grant from the Magnum Foundation and the World Monuments Fund to work with the Survivors of the Kinchela Boys Home, a state-run institution that kidnapped hundreds of First Nations boys between 1924 and 1970. Dhungutti man Uncle Harry Ritchie (#56) shares his 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?”’
Tace Stevens is a Noongar and Spinifex visual storyteller based in Boorloo/Perth. She uses photography and film to explore this world, and to better understand who she is as a First Nations woman.
The National Photographic Portrait Prize 2024 celebrates established and emerging artistic talent from across the country.
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