Via Ballarat International Foto Biennale
September 9, 2025
Panel Discussion: The Personal and Collaborative: Women Photographers on Relationship–Focused Modes of Representation
Nina Berman and Raphaella Rosella in conversation with Fiona Morris and Gemma Turnbull
Online Event - Book here
Contemporary documentary photographers and photomedia artists seek to address issues of representation and testimony by utilising new storytelling approaches, including nonlinear narratives, repurposing archival footage and collaborative practices. There has been a move from photographers recording ‘the other’ to working with non-artist individuals to share their own lived experiences. This turn towards the personal and collaborative has been led by women, rejecting the selective history which has been represented by the dominantly white, male, heteronormative gaze of the documentary mode. The work still questions and highlights social issues, including gender, representation and displacement, but from personal perspectives.
This online panel exploring the ethics, benefits and challenges of a collaborative documentary approach will focus on two women photographers: American documentary photographer Nina Berman’s whose work An Autobiography of Miss Wish (2017) is the product of a 25–year exchange between her and friend and collaborator Kimberly Stevens and Australian artist Raphaela Rosella who has spent decades co-creating photo-based projects alongside significant women in her life––low socio-economic communities with limited access to adequate support and opportunities. It will be led by Dr Gemma Turnbull and Fiona Morris, both Australian photographers and academics.
Participants will be emailed a Zoom link prior to the panel.
Please note: parental guidance may be needed for participants under the age of 18.
About the Panel
Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, journalist and educator. Her work explores American politics, militarism, environmental issues and post violence trauma. She is the author of Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq, (Trolley, 2004) portraits and interviews with wounded American veterans, Homeland, (Trolley, 2008) an examination of the militarization of American life post September 11, and An autobiography of Miss Wish (Kehrer, 2017) a story told with a survivor of sexual violence which was shortlisted for both the Aperture and Arles book prizes. Her work has been exhibited at more than 100 international venues from the Whitney Museum Biennial to the concrete security walls at the Za’atari refugee camp. Public collections include the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of the City of New York, the Harvard Art Museums and the Bibliothèque nationale de France among others. She has participated in workshops around the world for young photographers and writes frequently on photojournalism for the Columbia Journalism Review. She is a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York City.
Fiona Morris is an Associate Lecturer in Visual Arts and Photography at the University of Wollongong where she is also a PhD candidate. Her photographic practice and research explore representation and personal narratives in the expanding field of documentary photography. With over 15 years of experience, Fiona has worked extensively across media and non-governmental organisations, including as a photographer for Fairfax Media, Getty Images, Greenpeace Australia, and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Her work has been exhibited in galleries and festivals both nationally and internationally, with shows in the United States, France, Lithuania, and Hong Kong.
Raphaela (Rosie) Rosella is an Italian Australian artist from Nimbin – an over-policed, low socio-economic community in New South Wales. For over fifteen years, she has worked at the intersection of socially engaged art and documentary practice, co-creating lens-based works alongside her sisters, friends, and family – women directly impacted by the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). Together, they have built a co-created archive spanning photography, moving image, audio, and the collection of ephemera and state-issued documents, to resist bureaucratic representations of their lived experiences. Beyond the gallery, their work plays a critical role in legal and personal spaces – appearing in family albums, memorials, custody disputes, and courtrooms. It has supported successful bail and parole applications and contributed to reduced custodial sentences. Rosella holds a PhD from RMIT’s School of Art (2025). From an abolition feminist standpoint, her research offers a relational framework for decarcerating archives within long-form and collaborative documentary photography projects.
Gemma Turnbull is an Australian artist, researcher, and educator whose work exposes and challenges the historical weaponisation of photography against marginalised communities. She positions collaborative practice as a reparative approach to documentary storytelling, focusing on amplifying images made by and with people typically excluded from mainstream art spaces.
