Photography / Until Justice Comes by Juno Gemes. Book review by BRIAN ROPE.

Until Justice Comes (Fifty Years of The Movement for Indigenous Rights, Photographs 1970-2024) is a most significant and important book that, undoubtedly, will become a valuable resource for teachers and leave a significant legacy. It reveals the true history of Australia.

Juno Gemes was born in Hungary in 1944 and emigrated to Australia with her parents in 1949. Gemes is an activist as well as being one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary photographers. Using words and images, she has spent more than 50 years documenting the changing social landscape of our nation, and in particular the lives and struggles of Aboriginal Australians.

Amongst her many achievements she created a visual document of the historic Uluru Handback Ceremony on October 26, 1985, at Uluru, NT. And she was one of just 10 photographers invited to photographically document the 2008 National Apology in the Parliament of Australia.

This book’s photographs cover crucial moments in history including the Redfern Revolution, the land rights campaigns, the National Apology to the Stolen Generations, the election of 11 indigenous members to the 47th Federal Parliament, and the preparations for the 2023 Referendum on the Voice to Parliament.

This powerful collection of more than 220 photographs, brings Gemes’ current and continuing work together with her living archive. It portrays her career witnessing and advocating for change.

This visual uncovering of an often-invisible history has been at the heart of Gemes’ engagement with the First Nations people she has known and worked with throughout all these years. The book shows us both well-known and lesser leaders, intimate community events and activism.

Why did I say true history in my opening paragraph? Because we are one nation. We are all Australians – indigenous first people, descendants of those who established a British colony here in 1788, or those (including me as a young migrant child) who arrived later from numerous parts of the world to make Australia their home are part of our nation. My parents were. My children are. The book’s author Juno Gemes is. Most people reading this will be citizens of Australia. Together we comprise our one nation and are all part of the true history of our nation. That was acknowledged by a banner displayed at the Tent Embassy on its 50^th anniversary in 2022.

We have all contributed to the making of our one nation. All indigenous first people from the very beginning right until now have contributed in many ways. The convicts, marines, sailors, colonial officials and free settlers who arrived in 1788 and all their descendants added more. The migrants from many different cultures who have come over the years since have also brought different skills. Together everyone has played a part in making Australia what it is today.

Juno’s book puts decades of faces to indigenous activism