About the Book:
This significant book brings together a powerful collection of over 220 photographs, fusing Juno Gemes’ current and continuing work with her unique living archive. It is the summation of a career witnessing and advocating for change: a collection of photographs making visible the history of the First Nations people’s struggle for justice over the last fifty years in Australia, providing a visual history and background of The Movement leading up to the Voice referendum of late 2023. 

Something Personal is a landmark publication based on collaboration, revealing the true history of Australia. The uncovering of an often-invisible history of resistance and the fight for self-determination has long been at the heart of Juno Gemes’ engagement with the First Nations people she has known and worked with over decades and generations. These photographs include portraits of political and cultural leaders and intimate community events as well as activism played out on the streets. Continuing her collaborative approach, the book includes new writings and poems by key contributors including the Honourable Linda Burney MP, Larissa Behrendt, Djon Mundine, Fred Myers, Frances Peters-Little, John Maynard, Catherine de Lorenzo, and Ali Cobby Eckermann.

Photographs covering crucial moments in history including the Redfern Revolution, the land rights campaigns, the National Apology to the Stolen Generations, the election of eleven Indigenous Members to the 47th Federal Parliament, and the preparations for the 2023 Referendum on the Voice to Parliament, form the backbone of this book.

About the Author:
Photographer and social justice activist Juno Gemes has spent much of her long career documenting the lives and struggles of First Nations people. Born in Budapest, Gemes moved to Australia with her family in 1949. She held her first solo exhibition, We Wait No More, in 1982; the same year she exhibited photographs in the group shows After the Tent Embassy and Apmira: Artists for Aboriginal Land Rights. 

In 2003 the National Portrait Gallery exhibited her portraits of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander reconciliation activists and personalities, Proof: Portraits from the Movement 1978–2003, and has since acquired many of her photographs. Gemes was one of ten photographers invited to document that National Apology in Canberra in 2008. The Macquarie University Art Gallery held a survey exhibition of her work, The Quiet Activist: Juno Gemes, in 2019