Summary

Photograph taken in Camp 22 at Alice Springs during the 1901 -1902 expedition of Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen. Spencer noted in his field diary 'just at midday word came that a mob of strange natives was coming up. There was much excitement in the camps as strange natives may mean a big row... After about half an hour, during which time no notice had apparently been taken of the visitors, though, in reality, the local men had provided themselves with their weapons and gone to the spot where visitors were received, one or two of the older local men went to them, squatted down on the sand in front of them, and invited them to come up. After being thus invited they formed themselves into a solid square and approached at a fairly quick run, every man with his spear aloft and all of them adopting the curious high knee action' (Spencer diary, April-August 1901, p.20). Spencer and Gillen met at the end of the Horn Expedition at Alice Springs in July of 1894. This meeting and subsequent friendship resulted in a number of collaborative field expeditions and publications. In 1901 Spencer and Gillen set out on what would be their greatest collaboration and final expedition together, to study the Arrernte people and other groups between the Arrernte and the north coast. Spencer and Gillen were intent upon obtaining the most detailed as possible records of the societies they studied, and to achieve this, they used the most advanced technology available to them. The two men became pioneers not only of photography but also of sound and film recording. Their diaries make numerous references to the use of this equipment and the challenges they met in obtaining good results. The cameras that they used had developed sufficiently to record action sequences as they occurred. Spencer's desire was to take photographs of people engaged in the activities of daily life, while remaining as unconscious as possible about the presence of the camera.

Physical Description

Silver gelatin emulsion. Quarter plate.

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