Search Results

Advanced Search

Note: Layers are contributed from many sources by many people or derived by computer and are the responsibility of the contributor. Layers may be incomplete and locations and dates may be imprecise. Check the layer for details about the source. Absence in TLCMap does not indicate absence in reality. Use of TLCMap may inform heritage research but is not a substitute for established formal and legal processes and consultation.

Log in to save searches and contribute layers.
Displaying 1 result from a total of 1:

Details

Latitude
52.561928
Longitude
-1.464854
Start Date
1904-01-01
End Date
1983-01-01

Description

Sources

ID
tb9183

Extended Data

Birth Place
England, UK
Biography
photographer, film-maker, editor and Presbyterian clergyman, was born and educated in England. He came to Australia as an adult in 1942 and played an influential role in the Presbyterian Church for 40 years. He was the first Director of the Audio Visual Department of the Church in Victoria, he ran the first Stewardship campaign in the country in 1955 and he was founder and first president of the Australian Film Society. In 1953 he produced a film about Aborigines entitled Man of the Mulga . In 1966 Aikin became a freelance professional photographer. In 1970 he was appointed editor of the Church’s paper, Outreach , and then often took photographs to illustrate articles. His widow, Margaret Aikin, said that 'he always saw photography as a means of communication’. The National Library of Australia holds a collection of about 1,000 of Aikin’s gelatin silver photographs taken 1942-c.1978. Most are of young people, both indigenous and non-indigenous, in schools or church-related activities throughout Australia. 81 are exhibition prints. 21 photographs, ranging in size from exhibition prints to reference prints, record the traditional life of the people of the South Australian Musgrave Ranges region (c.1950). They include portraits of individuals, e.g. a man holding a baby (P3499), groups such as a large group of hunters (P3506) and people engaged in activities like skinning a kangaroo (P3498) or milking a goat (P3501). There is a photograph of the opening of Ernabella Church in the Musgrave Ranges in 1953, showing a large mixed population waiting outside before the ceremony began (P846/120). 14 photographs of Yirrkala Aboriginal Community on the Gove Peninsula at the north-eastern tip of Arnhem Land (c.1974) include buildings around Yirrkala and construction work around the college and a portrait of Wandjuk Marika. (Aikin took another portrait in the 1970s when Wandjuk was a member of the Australia Council for the Arts.) His photographs of Aurukun (Cape York) people include one of an Aurukun (Wik?) woman teaching her weaving skills to a Spinners and Weavers Guild Exhibition crowd at Melbourne in 1975. 16 (c.1968-78) are portraits of young people living in the Top End, ranging from kindergarten children to young girls sewing and young men with guitars or harvesting pawpaw on Elcho Island. Photographs in his Australian Inland Mission (AIM) frontier services collection taken 1974-75 show various people involved in education, from primary school to health education, including a white teacher learning the Aboriginal language Anindilyakwa (or Warnindilyakwa, P846/940); also a blacksmith shop (P846/948). Writers: Staff Writer Date written: 1999 Last updated: 2011
Born
b. 1904
Summary
English male photographer, film-maker, editor and Presbyterian priest who went outback for Outreach, a Church journal, documenting indigenous cultures and mission activity.
Gender
Male
Died
1983
Age at death
79