Newcastle photographer Milly Hooper has turned the lens on her eldest son to prompt a discussion about racial discrimination and Indigenous deaths in custody in Australia.
The powerful series, My Son's Skin is not a weapon, was shot at The Lock-Up in Newcastle and is being showcased at the Head On Photo Festival in Sydney this month.
The 15th annual festival is expected to attract an estimated 400,000 visitors over three weeks. This year, the works of more than 600 emerging and professional photographers were blindly selected from a record 4000 entries from 52 countries.
For Hooper, a self-taught photographer who is close to finishing a diploma in photography at TAFE NSW, exhibiting at Head On is a "pinch-me" moment.
"I started in 2016 when I was living in the Northern Territory, just having a go, taking photos," she says from her home in Woodberry.
"I was part of a joint exhibition by six Aboriginal artists at Head On in 2022 called First Sight and that was the first time I'd done anything like that. And now to be invited to present my own work - and being on an artist panel to talk about my work - just thinking about it gives me butterflies.
"It's been a humbling journey, and I don't take anything for granted."
Hooper's images show her 18-year-old son, shirtless, applying ochre to his skin. His vulnerability shows. So does his quiet strength.
"It was a personal journey for me in terms of telling a story about my fears as a mum as my child grows up, knowing the fears I have are just the reality for black people," she explains.
"A non-Aboriginal person couldn't tell that story. Yeah, they might have the same sort of fears as a parent, but not because of the colour of their skin.
"Using The Lock-up [a former jail] allowed me to be raw with those images."
And the significance of her son applying ochre?
"Ochre is that connection to culture but it is also acting as an armour, in a sense. Even if he's not wearing it out in public, there's this layer of strength that he has."
She tells me about a 17-year-old boy who died in a cell at a youth detention centre in August, and how it hurt her heart to hear the news. He was the second Indigenous teenager to die while in custody in Western Australia this year.
"I fear that if my son goes out anywhere and he's with his non-Aboriginal friends, if they get in trouble as a group, he's the one they'll pick because of the colour of his skin," she says.
"And the biggest thing for me is, even though he's never been in trouble, he's a good kid, if something happened and he ended up in jail, the fear as a black mum isn't about whether he will be OK in there, the fear is, is he going to come out alive?
"We had the royal commission findings into Aboriginal deaths in custody released in 1991, and the number of people who have died while in custody since 1991 is now over 500.
"Systemic changes haven't happened. So for me, the fear is that he could be the best kid and always do the right thing, but things will happen that are outside of his control because of the way that other people perceive him, even if they don't know him, and that's huge as a mum."
Hooper's life experiences have shaped her into the woman - and the mother - she is today, and she acknowledges that her fears may not be shared by her son.
"He mightn't see things the same as me, no. I grew up in a different generation, where the reality of walking into a shop and being followed immediately by staff was very real," she says.
"I had an experience in Alice Springs where this person was fixing up the coat hangers close by wherever I was walking, and it got to the point where I turned around and said to her 'Look, if you want to keep following me around, can you at least carry my handbag?' and she didn't know what to say.
"For my kids, it's about teaching them that where they think something isn't fair, to just address it in a diplomatic way so they're not seen as the angry person, or me as the angry black woman."
Three of Hooper's four children were born at John Hunter Hospital but spent eight years living in the Territory.
"We moved back up to Alice from Newcastle in 2012 and spent time on my partner's family homeland which is 36 kilometres west of town. He's an Arrernte man," she says.
"The wide open space was amazing. We had the West MacDonnell Ranges on the doorstep.
"When I first started out as a photographer it was mainly because you didn't see that many Aboriginal families getting portraits done. I wanted to bridge that gap. You can tell the difference when a non-Aboriginal person takes images or tells a certain story because it comes from a different lens."
Her sole aim when taking photographs is to "Challenge Them Stereotypes". Those three words have become her mantra.
"I'm part of an Indigenous creative collective called Blaklens, and it's about Aboriginal mob telling Aboriginal mob stories," Hooper says.
"Even though I don't know the young man who died in custody recently, the reality is that it could have been my kid, that could've been my Uncle, that could've been my Aunty ... as a people we don't have to know those who have passed away, we can still relate because of that 'what if' scenario.
"With these images it's me, as a mum, telling the story about how much I fear what life will be like for my son and other people's sons. That's the reality we live in."
