Private lives of the mob | The Australian

IN the heavy, noiseless air of desert country, an Aboriginal community is out hunting when the sound of a camera shutter cuts the air like a bullet from a gun. Heads turn, questions are asked and the — usually white — photographer is suddenly centre stage in an inquisition.
The curtain of suspicion can hang heavily in such cases between image-taker and subject, prompting a turned away head or a shielding hand. It can provoke unease on the part of a person viewing the image that it has been captured opportunistically, even sneakily.

The absence of such telltale defences and doubts is what strikes one immediately about Conversations with the Mob, photojournalist Megan Lewis’s 240-page collection of photographs and conversations with the Martu people of northwest Western Australia. The 100 large-format pictures have not emerged from a fly-in, fly-out form of photography but from a mutually trusting relationship that took time to build

Check it out here.