Month: June 2021

The City of Yarra announced a $15,000 grant for a photo exhibition on homelessness in a council meeting at Richmond Town Hall today.

City of Yarra Councillor Stephen Jolly said the project, Experiences of Homelessness, was “useful auxiliary” to the council’s homelessness strategy.

“Something like this can have a big impact in highlighting the crisis we have at the moment.

“However, if one was to say that’s all we need to do, it would be a mistake,” he said.

The City of Yarra’s 2019 Homelessness Strategy implemented coordinated and compassionate crisis response, early intervention for those at risk, and prevention of homelessness through affordable housing.

Cr Jolly called for increased pressure on the Victorian government to build more public housing and the need to incorporate low-cost housing into new local developments.

“The state and local governments have to come in and intervene, or people will suffer as a consequence,” he said.

According to the 2016 census, the City of Yarra’s rate of homelessness is 95 per 10,000 people, more than double the rate of Victoria as a whole.

Experiences of Homelessness would be a “photo-documentary project and exhibition”, said Melbourne-based photographer Alister McKeich.

“It’s likely to be a photo book with a whole bunch of analogue black and white photography documenting experiences and places of homelessness.

“We’re also hoping to turn it into a multimedia projection using the same photographs and the audio of interviews I’ve done,” he said.

McKeich holds a master’s degree in humanitarian law and has been a regular contributor to the Guardian and Al Jazeera, as well as publishing a full-length novel, The Eyeball End.

Like Experiences of Homelessness, his previous photo exhibitions on the Rohingya and Khasi labourers have also had a humanitarian focus.

Journalist and photographer Alister McKeich, known professionally as Ali MC, has been imprisoned by the Bangladesh military, beaten to within an inch of his life in Saigon, and held at gunpoint in Jamaica.

But for Experiences of Homelessness, a multimedia exhibition focused on Melbourne’s homeless crisis, Ali has focused his lens a little closer to home.

“It started when I met a lady by the name of Cheryl who was selling the big issue outside of Melbourne Central in April, 2000.

“We just kind of got chatting, and as you may have noticed from my writing and what I do, I’m pretty curious by nature.

“I love talking to people and hearing peoples’ stories, so we ended up having a bit of a chat and I thought it would be interesting to do an article or some kind of photo essay on the experience of homelessness,” he said.

As Ali developed the project, ethical considerations around the photography of marginalised subjects were at the forefront of his mind, a lesson he learned during his photography of the oppression of the Rohingya in Myanmar and Khasi stone labourers in the northeast Indian province of Meghalaya.

“These days, as a white male Western journalist, you need to really consider what you’re doing there and how you interact with people.

“I think the paradigm has really shifted in the last 20 years, and we have to be a lot more mindful of our roles as journalists and photographers – who we’re communicating stories on behalf of and who we’re communicating to.

“Personally, I think you can always tell when a journalist is just doing something as a journalist or whether they’re doing it because they genuinely have empathy and care about the community they’re working with,” he said.

Production on Experiences of Homelessness is currently underway.

ABC journalist Russell Jackson won the Gold Quill Award tonight for his article on racism in the AFL, The Persecution of Robert Muir is the Story Football Doesn’t Want to Hear.

Director for the Centre for Advancing Journalism Andrew Dodd said Jackson’s win at the Melbourne Press Club’s yearly Quill Awards ceremony underscores changing perspectives in the Victorian media’s coverage of racism in sport.

“It has sparked long overdue apologies and contributed significantly to a wider community conversation,” Dodd said in his presentation of the Gold Quill Award.

The Persecution of Robert Muir “transformed Muir’s life”, he said.

Published by the ABC in August 2020, The Persecution of Robert Muir detailed the racist treatment experienced by Aboriginal AFL star Robert Muir during the 1970s and 1980s and the impact of decades of abuse.

Muir’s story and the opportunities taken away from him were a “metaphor for this country”, Jackson said in his acceptance speech.

“Rob’s problem as a proud Aboriginal man was racism.”

“Rob, I know we’ve got a bit of work to do to get you the things you need, but I won’t stop until you feel safe,” he said.

Muir was in the crowd during Jackson’s speech.

ABC journalist and Melbourne Press Club board member Matilda Marozzi said Jackson’s win was “part of this bigger recognition that we have had problems in sports specifically, but sport being a microcosm of the broader community”,

“It is so good to see that the journalism community has recognised this as an important story.”

“10, 20, 30 years ago, maybe it wouldn’t have even been commissioned,” she said.

The Persecution of Robert Muir prompted public statements from the AFL and Muir’s former club the St Kilda Saints, apologising for their respective roles in his abuse.

The AFL Players Association, the Saint Kilda Saints and the AFL could not be contacted for comment on this story.