Foelsche's Album of Compelling Aboriginal Portraits

Foelsche, Paul Heinrich Matthias [1831-1914]. An album containing 48 photographs, each approx. 16.5 x 12 cm. The title page of the album with a stuck-down label dated July 1898 'To My Friend J. Scott Black With Kind Regards from Paul Foelsche' (the name in mss on an additional affixed label.) The intense, beautifully lit portrait images of Aboriginal men, women, boys and girls are all in a standardised format, with an absence of props or backgrounds although the subjects are often shown wearing neck and arm jewellery, some with head and nose adornments. Foelsche's photographic portraits of indigenous subjects taken in and around Palmerston (Darwin) between the 1870s and 1890s include many of the most visually compelling taken by any nineteenth century photographer working in Australia. He had sailed from Hamburg for Australia, landing at Port Adelaide on 26 October 1854. He may have headed, like so many, for the Victorian goldfields, but in November 1856 he joined the South Australian mounted police as a police trooper and was posted to Strathalbyn early the following year. His work entailed frequent contact with the local aboriginal people, with whom he is reported to have got on well. In December 1869, by then a Sub-Inspector, he was transferred to Palmerston in the Northern Territory. Policing in the Northern Territory involved not only maintaining the law amongst the European settlers, but sorting out difficulties between them and Aborigines and to some extent among the aborigines themselves. He was promoted to Inspector around 1876. With the discovery of gold around 1872 and the increased population that brought, mostly single men, then the arrival of Chinese miners, labourers and merchants who came to dominate the population, policing in the late 1870s became vastly more complex than it had been. Apart from photography, which absorbed much of his income and spare time, he took a great interest in aboriginal culture however his legacy in this regard is extremely controversial. Historians concur in showing that Foelsche played An important role, as the chief of police forces, in the violence inflicted upon the indigenous population of the Northern Territory. Tony Roberts, known for his award-winning 2005 book 'Frontier Justice', depicts Foelsche as 'merciless with Aboriginals': 'The man who masterminded more massacres in the Territory than anyone else was Inspector Foelsche. A former soldier, he was cunning, devious and merciless with Aboriginals?'