During the past few weeks of my stay in Mparntwe, I’ve heard or read about some stories about sites and places such as the public library that have been affected by a new law or some colonial changes.
These upsetting changes have occurred in multiple places around town, yet many haven’t heard about these incidents.
After spending some time researching the Internet and the public library and reading the book; ‘A town like Mparntwe’, I decided to take photos of these sites and tell their stories through images and words.
However I have come to realise that this is a very sensitive subject and there are different views and versions of stories and I am not certain about the exact locations of some incidents. It seems to me this is the beginning of a long research journey to understand this land better.
The images that I have taken so far mainly don’t have any aesthetic value and are just documents.
However, experimenting with Cyanotype was one of my main plans for this residency and it seemed like the perfect fit to print these documentations of sites with a tragic aftermath in blue ink using the sunshine that is one of the characteristics of this arid environment.
Katayoun Javan, 2022
In 2020 specific Covid-19 policies introduced at Alice Springs Public Library included banning unaccompanied patrons aged 15 years and under, alongside a particular approach to contact tracing. According to the ASTC’s 2018-2019 annual report, 93 per cent of the unaccompanied library patrons accessing youth services at the library were First Nation People.
Read more about Libraries Are For Everyone.
Read more about Katayoun’s work.