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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders both past and present.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that this website contains images of deceased persons.

Yukultji and Yalti with their family, 2019

Ben Mcnamara

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2020 Finalist

Yukultji and Yalti are members of a group referred to as ‘the Pintupi Nine’, believed to be the last Indigenous Australians to come into contact with the ‘outside’ world following European settlement. The group was still pursuing a traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle, consistent with that lived by their ancestors for tens of thousands of years, when they came to media attention in October 1984. This photograph was taken in Pintupi country on Lake Mackay, a salt lake 100 kilometres long in the middle of the desert on the Western Australia-Northern Territory border.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2020

Other NPPP photos from Ben McNamara

Marissa, 2022 Ben McNamara
2023 Finalist
We were cold, 2019 Ben Mcnamara
2020 Finalist
Shaun, 2015 by Ben McNamara
2016 Finalist
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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.

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