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In this special photography package, four artists imagine fictional pasts and possible futures as a way of questioning the present. Asian-American men lounge along the Hudson River Valley, staking claim to the land their ancestors once worked. Hollywood monsters invade the ethnographic photographs taken by colonial settlers in Brazil, challenging the idea of the “alien”. In 20th-century Sweden, a group of sisters sews intricate wedding garments that will never be worn. And the old names of Palestinian villages — their names before the mass displacement of the 1948 Nakba — are restored in new maps. Alternative histories suggest alternative futures.

Alongside these photo essays we present the work of four fiction writers: Sara Baume, Vinson Cunningham, Yomi Ṣode and Rebecca Watson. Each has written a short story or personal essay in response to a photograph, creating pairings of word and image that are by turns lyrical and spiky, meditative and deeply moving. A photographer’s frozen moment is reanimated by a writer, its characters given an unexpected afterlife on the page.

— Griselda Murray Brown

‘A River Once Dreamed’

Andrew Kung

In the series A River Once Dreamed, I recompose the Hudson River School’s romanticised paintings by staging scenes in which the river valley is inhabited by Asian-American men. Each constructed scene challenges the predominant iconography of the American landscape, and recontextualises the relationship between nature and belonging, identity and masculinity, history and erasure.

Informed by the concept of Manifest Destiny, which held that Americans were chosen by God to expand westwards and colonise the land, previous depictions of the landscape, such as those by the Hudson River School, implied who was able to participate in the natural world and how. Despite major contributions to the landscape, including constructing the Transcontinental Railroad, advancing the nation’s agricultural infrastructure and pledging allegiance in war, Asian migrants and their histories remain largely misrepresented and invisible.

Through intimate scenes of friendship, the cast of characters is reimagined as cultural citizens of the Hudson River Valley, America’s first iconic landscape. Ultimately, they are contesting the history of land ownership and staking their claim to the American pastoral.

Andrew Kung’s exhibition, “A River Once Dreamed”, will be at Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, Oregon, from November 6-29

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‘Ficções Coloniais’

Denilson Baniwa

I think of King Kong, taken from his land to be displayed as a trophy and a freak, just as the Tupinambá people were taken to Europe and exhibited in public squares. Godzilla, the Loch Ness Monster, the Kraken — they could all represent what happens when progress advances over forests, rivers and ecosystems. Western stories and cinema imagine alien attacks that destroy cities because that is exactly what the west has done over time, and now it fears a historical revenge. For many of the world’s indigenous peoples, the aliens were once the westerners.

This work, from the series Ficções Coloniais (which translates as “Colonial Fictions”), is part of a broader practice that reflects on the invention of “Brazil” and the ways in which indigenous peoples have been represented, exoticised and silenced in visual culture. I draw from historical accounts, ethnographic archives, popular cinema and contemporary media to weave images that break away from conventional narratives. By placing indigenous perspectives into the visual language of mass culture, from Hollywood blockbusters to advertising, I seek to expose the colonial gaze embedded in these global icons.

Here, I imagine indigenous art as a right of reply, and the right to tell an alternative history of Brazil. I repurpose the icons we have grown used to seeing framed on television screens, in cinemas and on cell phones, icons that are metaphors for the idea of “the other”.

By using humour to bring together such diverse, seemingly jarring material, I hope to spark debate on appropriation, image rights and reproduction — where guaraná is originally Sateré Mawé and popcorn is Guarani.

This is not only about reclaiming symbols, but about reframing the narratives that shape the way the world sees indigenous cultures past, present and future.

Denilson Baniwa will be exhibiting as part of “Ancestral Futures” at Les Rencontres d’Arles until August 31 and as part of “Câmbio de Paradigma. Um giro no Brasil” at the Cervantes Institute of Rio de Janeiro until September 3

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‘Reimagining Homeland’

Samaa Emad

Reimagining Homeland is an artistic project that uses collage to delve into the intricate tapestry of memory and culture in Palestine. It aims to (re)create and (re)imagine the vibrant life of the villages destroyed in the 1948 Nakba, the Arabic name meaning “catastrophe”, when more than half the Palestinian population were driven from their homes and lands. This project weaves together disparate elements with the aim of fostering dialogue and reconciliation.

The Palestinian narrative is one fraught with struggles for justice, identity and survival amid a landscape marked by displacement and destruction. Reimagining Homeland seeks to engage with these complexities through collage, providing a visual and tactile journey through memory and imagination. Drawing upon archival photographs, oral histories and personal narratives, the work incorporates a diverse range of materials. These materials serve as the building blocks for compositions that capture the essence of Palestinian life and culture, while also reflecting on the impact of conflict and displacement.

I have selected pictures from the Palestinian archive from the period before the Nakba, pictures of daily practices carried out by Palestinians in their villages. I have included maps of these villages and their old names, which were changed after the occupation. With techniques such as tearing, cutting, layering and stitching, the collages become a medium for exploration, dialogue and healing.

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‘Hail Mary, Bobbin Lace, Serpent’s Thread’

Emilia Martin

Growing up partly on my grandparents’ farm in eastern Poland, I spent countless hours observing my grandmother, a rural textile worker, as she sewed, her fingers dancing with needle and thread in a rhythm that skirted between the ordinary and the mythical. “Will you put a thread on for me?” she would say, trusting my younger eyes as though they were an extension of her own.

Her work, like so much labour categorised as domestic and inherently feminine, was unrecognised, undervalued and dismissed and once she passed away, her textiles were discarded. The project Hail Mary, Bobbin Lace, Serpent’s Thread interweaves her story with that of the Andersson sisters, who, living in Sweden at the dawn of the 20th century, spent their lives creating textiles for their Knottekistje (wedding caskets). Yet four of the five sisters did not marry and their intricate textiles were never used, leaving a complex record of their lives while challenging the definition of textile making as a practical feminine craft with the sole purpose of domestic use.

Emilia Martin will be exhibiting “I saw a tree bearing stones in the place of apples and pears” at the Pictura Gallery in Bloomington, Indiana, in November

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The most-streamed Icelandic artist ever, with Björk trailing in her wake, is a Berklee-trained 26-year-old inspired by golden oldies and classic musicals. Laufey, pronounced Lay-vay, recounts Gen Z tales of romance amid a light swirl of bossa nova, cocktail jazz and orchestral pop. 

Propelled by TikTok fame, she occupies a curious space between cutesy gimmickry and intriguingly driven stylism: the notion of being haunted often turns up in her songwriting. With each new record, the gimmicky aspect recedes. Her songs have gained more than 5bn streams, while a recent New York Times interview included pan-musical encomia from Olivia Rodrigo, Barbra Streisand and Gustavo Dudamel. 

A Matter of Time is her third studio album in three years, an old-fashioned rate of return. Laufey Lín Bing Jónsdóttir (her full name) claims it will reveal her “angrier” and “sexier” sides. “I wanted the world to know I’m not always so polite,” she insists. We drop the needle on opening track “Clockwork”, smelling salts at hand — only to find the kind of close harmony vocals and plush arrangements that made Patti Page the US’s biggest-selling female singer in the 1950s. 

“Swore I’d never do this again,” Laufey sings, all but winking as she tells a tale of going on a first date with a friend. There are no changes in approach here, nor in “Lover Girl”, a jaunty bossa nova bagatelle about being love-struck. But “Snow White” introduces a shift in tone. Accompanied by introspectively strummed guitar, like Billie Eilish in one of her ukulele moments, Laufey whisper-sings about not measuring up to ideals of beauty. As an orchestra swells into focus, her vocals become unusually dramatic and Broadway-like, including the use of vibrato, Streisand’s signature technique.

An F-bomb is dropped in “Too Little, Too Late”, a Rodrigo-ish piano ballad sung from the point of view of a man who fails to follow the dictates of his heart. “Tough Luck” blends the thrumming pop-rock of Taylor Swift with twinkling choral harmonies and orchestral embellishments. The song takes aim at a cheating ex-partner, a downward twist on the breezy romantic scenarios of previous albums. (Aaron Dessner, who has worked with Swift, joins Laufey’s usual collaborator Spencer Stewart as the album’s co-producer.)

A chintzy strain of Disneyfication prevents A Matter of Time from achieving real emotional traction, as does the singer’s somewhat inexpressive belting. But the album is enjoyable and unusual, a bridge between the “pop girls” of today and their equivalents from decades past.

★★★★☆

‘A Matter of Time’ is released by AWAL

Since childhood, Katie Norris has been called an “old soul” – which won’t surprise anyone who saw her solo debut Farm Fatale, a gothic melodrama in character as a Miss Havisham-like spinster, crazy for cats. Something of that remains in Go West, Old Maid, where we meet again the gen Z flatmates to whom Norris plays “cool governess”. But it’s worn more lightly here, put on for laughs to startle us, and slipped out of when – the thrust of the show, this – she wants to talk about her late dad, a plummy thespian dispensing useless advice to Katie across not so much a generation gap as a chasm.

That gives Norris the only excuse she needs to open with a withering takedown of “old dads”, and an enjoyable fantasy of herself becoming a mum in her 80s. She has great fun with her predilection for man-crushing here, notably in a song, about being a godmother that imagines her exes turned into toads at the bottom of her garden. An even finer number conjures her father’s nostalgia for his theatrical golden age – and by that stage, the song is amusing and tender in equal measure, because we have heard he went to a brutal boarding school with Boris Johnson’s dad, and so he has our deepest sympathy.

In between, some asides about Norris’s secretive mum (raising so many questions as to almost knock the dead-dad show off its axis), a routine about her personal trainer, and a show-and-tell about her new taxidermy habit. Cumulatively, Go West, Old Maid doesn’t make quite the impact of Farm Fatale: there’s something anticlimactic about its dramatic shape, and the act-out of her father’s supposed play script feels like a generic nugget of audience participation.

But at her best, for most of this show, Norris isn’t generic in the slightest. She has developed such a distinctive and diverting persona: threatening (but just for fun), eccentric and proud of it in her “Victorian bellboy” outfit, apt at any moment to drop an unhinged aside or out-of-the-blue song – like the cracker here celebrating the missionary position. “Old soul”, she may be, but Norris’s act is in glorious full bloom.

The Fitzroy weather turns from unseasonably muggy to reassuringly bitter as soon as we emerge from Mario’s on Brunswick Street, but cabaret legend Paul Capsis has come prepared and whips out an oversized umbrella. “I knew to expect anything,” he smiles, making it sound like a personal creed.

Capsis is a born-and-bred Sydneysider, and yet he claims that “90% of people I speak to think I was born in Melbourne, that I grew up or that I’m based here.” Perhaps it’s the attitude – the spikiness and intensity of his onstage persona, or that slightly subterranean aura of the demimonde he carries with him in the real world – that makes him seem better suited to the moodier southern metropolis.

Slightly built, with his long chestnut hair pulled back from his leonine face, Capsis is petite but striking as he swishes an ample scarf around his neck. While primarily a stage performer – he’s appeared in everything from Bertolt Brecht to Rocky Horror – Capsis first leapt to national attention in Ana Kokkinos’s Head On, the 1998 film adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’s debut novel, Loaded. He played the protagonist’s best friend, Johnny, who moonlights as drag diva Toula in defiance of his strict religious Greek upbringing.

“My father is Greek and my mother’s family are Maltese,” Capsis says. “I knew this world. I knew these men.” Patriarchal and socially conservative, it was a challenging and sometimes scary place for a young boy trying to navigate his gender and sexuality. “But it was always the women I looked up to in my family. The men were miserable.” When his parents split up, Capsis moved to Surry Hills in the inner city, where he was raised largely by his maternal grandmother, Angela.

Capsis maintains that he was “so naive as a child. I knew nothing about sex”. This changed dramatically when he started performing around the Sydney drag circuit in the late 80s; the bitchiness and misogyny among gay men in the scene at the time, he says, also came as a shock. “I’d entered a world that was so bizarre to me. The drinks and the drugs. I thought I’d found my people, but I was a minority among my people. I wasn’t fully embraced.”

As we pass the Provincial hotel on the corner of Brunswick and Johnson Streets, Capsis grabs my arm. “This is where I first met Ana [Kokkinos]! I’d just read the book and she’d asked to meet me, not to be in the film but to consult about the Greek aspects of the character.” He went to the meeting in character and soon Kokkinos and the casting director were asking him all sorts of questions. He didn’t realise it, but they were sizing him up for the role.

In some key way, Capsis’s performance in Head On came to define a certain queer, second-generation migrant experience, tied inextricably to old-world European traditions while desperate to carve a space in an Australia that spurned their ethnicity. “I had a very conservative Catholic upbringing, sheltered in many ways.” Angela – whom Capsis adored and would immortalise in his acclaimed solo show, Angela’s Kitchen – was a stalwart presence, fiercely loyal.

“When I was a child, I was adamant that I was a girl,” Capsis recalls, matter-of-factly. “I remember vividly the adults standing over me and insisting I was a boy and I’d be screaming ‘No! I’m a girl.’ It was pretty traumatic.” But whenever the men of the house tried to punish him for his perceived femininity, Angela would intervene. “My grandmother would sort of protect me from all that. She’d demand I be left alone.”

Puberty was particularly monstrous for Capsis but also a catalyst for some kind of self awareness. “When I hit puberty, my body started to go to war with me. Around 15, I started to negotiate what this all was,” Capsis says, swiping a hand down his body. “I said to myself, you are like a woman, you’re a guy and you like men. You’re just gonna have to deal with it. I’m not going to have anything chopped off, I’m not going to have anything added. I’m gonna be me and hope for the best.”

While Capsis acknowledges that a contemporary understanding of gender “would have given me words around my experience”, he is unconcerned about labels and doesn’t identify as trans. “I’m a feminine gay man.”

Capsis began his career “playing dead women”, impersonating (although channelling might be the apposite word) the often tragically complex divas of the past, legends like Janis Joplin, Judy Garland and Billie Holiday. Eventually, theatre visionary Barrie Kosky would conjure an ideal platform for this strange act of possession, Boulevard Delirium. It was arguably the sharpest, most dazzling piece of cabaret the country’s ever seen. While it folded in some of the grotesquerie of drag, it seemed to spring from a deeper, more empathetic well.

Capsis nods enthusiastically as we discuss this, the husky crack in his voice opening slightly. “The women I was obsessed with growing up were all strong women, if not in their character then in their voice. People like Judy Garland, Edith Piaf, Janis Joplin. These women had something so powerful, but it comes out of their life experience.”

Capsis’s career has seen him play some of queer history’s most revered figures, including Oscar Wilde and Quentin Crisp, as well as icons such as Marlene Dietrich. He’s about to play multiple roles in Sydney Theatre Company’s upcoming production of The Shiralee, and it’s a safe bet that at least one of them will be a woman.

“I come from strong stock,” Capsis says, a note of pride peaking through as we huddle under the cover of a shop awning, rain really coming down now. “My grandmother literally gave birth to my mother during an air raid. She was tough.” That familial connection has been one of the reasons Capsis has stayed in Sydney, even when a career in New York or Berlin beckoned. “I did choose to stay close to my grandmother and then when she died, my mother. It was a decision I made consciously and I don’t regret it.”

Capsis’s mother died less than a year ago and while he still grieves for her, he admits “It has freed me up. I can finally consider moving places, travelling for longer periods. I’ve never been to Paris. Perhaps I’ll go there next.” He could always move to Melbourne, where he seems part of the fabric of the city, or revisit Malta and the cradle of his forebears.

“I’ve performed in Malta. It’s fascinating but so Catholic.” He is often mistaken for a trans woman there, and has been laughed at in the streets. It’s the sort of thing that might cower or diminish anyone else, but Capsis – who was bullied mercilessly at school – is hard to intimidate.

He confronted them in his mother’s language: “I’m not crawling under a rock for you. I’m not going to hide for you.” As he recounts this, someone turns from across the street to stare. Capsis laughs uproariously, but then turns to me fiercely. “The women I loved, they didn’t put up with shit. They were fighting.”

She can barely see me – young Honey’s golden fringe falls well past her eyes. But the 11-month-old Highland calf trusts me, allowing me to nestle in close to brush her long, shaggy coat up along her neck. She tilts her head towards the sky, her wet pale pink nose catching the sun – she loves it. And for a moment, nothing else matters.

I’m at Wildhand Farm, a 10 hectare property in Willunga Hill, South Australia. Little more than 12 months ago, budding farmers Alice Cearns, 29, and Reece Merritt, 37, were “going broke”. Their income from growing and selling native Australian flora and proteas was not enough to support their growing family. They began hosting flower-arranging workshops for the public but, in a twist of fate, their two Highland cows stole the show.

“The excitement was crazy,” says Cearns. “People wanted to spend more time with the cows than the flowers. “We realised: we have to get more cows.”

The pair, who live on the farm with their two children, both under three, have seen more than 2,000 people through their property since launching private and small group Highland cattle experiences in October 2024. Dates now book out months in advance.

“That first woman from the flower workshop who asked to see the cows, she just started crying when she got up close with them,” Cearns says.

“We’ve had an 82nd birthday here, and she could barely walk, but she was just so over the moon to be out there.

“We realised it’s a very therapeutic process to be out there with them, brushing them, bonding with them. We had a woman who worked for the NDIS say how much it would help those with disabilities improve their mental health.”

Cow cuddling isn’t new: in recent years, farmers in Australia, the UK and the US have been inviting people to hug their herds as a supersized form of animal therapy. But these aren’t ordinary cows. Scottish Highland cattle – recognised for their shaggy coats and long, curved horns – aren’t farmed for meat in Australia, living to an average age of 23. There are a handful of other farmers and business owners who run Highland cow encounters in Australia, including The Farm at nearby Clarendon.

The animal-loving pair were drawn to Highlands for grazing because the breed isn’t used for milk or meat – though the cows’ endearing faces helped, too. “I wanted a cow breed that you didn’t have to kill,” Cearns says.

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Merritt’s feelings on this also run deep. Raised on his family’s sheep farm in Mount Compass, he says he “never liked the killing”. Highlands, the pair say, are more like giant pets. Their charismatic herd now numbers nine, each “with their own personalities”: Mabel, Millie, Matilda, Ruby, Mia, Max, Menzi and Banks, aged between seven months and four-and-a-half years.

At the start of the tour, the females come galumphing out – some faster than others (easy does it for the old girls). Merritt throws out a fresh batch of hay, giving them a chance to settle before we approach. Their presence feels big, not only in size but in an intangible, humbling energy that surrounds us as we slowly build confidence in patting, brushing and even cuddling the warm-bodied beauties.

Smiles and laughter ripple through the group – and the cows bask in the attention. First-time participant Georgia Standing, 22, says pampering the cows made her feel “warm and fuzzy”. “They’re so cute,” she says. “It’s satisfying getting their knots out, too.”

Brushing their coats feels grounding, wholesome. The surrounding gums, the fresh air and free-roaming chickens add to the tranquillity, as do the many rows of blooming flowers.

The cows are a time waster, Merritt jokes. “In the evening, I’ll come out here and the cows are just laying, and I’ll lay with them,” he says. “You can’t hear any cars. It’s just peaceful.”

She can barely see me – young Honey’s golden fringe falls well past her eyes. But the 11-month-old Highland calf trusts me, allowing me to nestle in close to brush her long, shaggy coat up along her neck. She tilts her head towards the sky, her wet pale pink nose catching the sun – she loves it. And for a moment, nothing else matters.

I’m at Wildhand Farm, a 10 hectare property in Willunga Hill, South Australia. Little more than 12 months ago, budding farmers Alice Cearns, 29, and Reece Merritt, 37, were “going broke”. Their income from growing and selling native Australian flora and proteas was not enough to support their growing family. They began hosting flower-arranging workshops for the public but, in a twist of fate, their two Highland cows stole the show.

“The excitement was crazy,” says Cearns. “People wanted to spend more time with the cows than the flowers. “We realised: we have to get more cows.”

The pair, who live on the farm with their two children, both under three, have seen more than 2,000 people through their property since launching private and small group Highland cattle experiences in October 2024. Dates now book out months in advance.

“That first woman from the flower workshop who asked to see the cows, she just started crying when she got up close with them,” Cearns says.

“We’ve had an 82nd birthday here, and she could barely walk, but she was just so over the moon to be out there.

“We realised it’s a very therapeutic process to be out there with them, brushing them, bonding with them. We had a woman who worked for the NDIS say how much it would help those with disabilities improve their mental health.”

Cow cuddling isn’t new: in recent years, farmers in Australia, the UK and the US have been inviting people to hug their herds as a supersized form of animal therapy. But these aren’t ordinary cows. Scottish Highland cattle – recognised for their shaggy coats and long, curved horns – aren’t farmed for meat in Australia, living to an average age of 23. There are a handful of other farmers and business owners who run Highland cow encounters in Australia, including The Farm at nearby Clarendon.

The animal-loving pair were drawn to Highlands for grazing because the breed isn’t used for milk or meat – though the cows’ endearing faces helped, too. “I wanted a cow breed that you didn’t have to kill,” Cearns says.

skip past newsletter promotion

after newsletter promotion

Merritt’s feelings on this also run deep. Raised on his family’s sheep farm in Mount Compass, he says he “never liked the killing”. Highlands, the pair say, are more like giant pets. Their charismatic herd now numbers nine, each “with their own personalities”: Mabel, Millie, Matilda, Ruby, Mia, Max, Menzi and Banks, aged between seven months and four-and-a-half years.

At the start of the tour, the females come galumphing out – some faster than others (easy does it for the old girls). Merritt throws out a fresh batch of hay, giving them a chance to settle before we approach. Their presence feels big, not only in size but in an intangible, humbling energy that surrounds us as we slowly build confidence in patting, brushing and even cuddling the warm-bodied beauties.

Smiles and laughter ripple through the group – and the cows bask in the attention. First-time participant Georgia Standing, 22, says pampering the cows made her feel “warm and fuzzy”. “They’re so cute,” she says. “It’s satisfying getting their knots out, too.”

Brushing their coats feels grounding, wholesome. The surrounding gums, the fresh air and free-roaming chickens add to the tranquillity, as do the many rows of blooming flowers.

The cows are a time waster, Merritt jokes. “In the evening, I’ll come out here and the cows are just laying, and I’ll lay with them,” he says. “You can’t hear any cars. It’s just peaceful.”