The Block, Redfern

Photographer Dean Sewell’s job – his passion – is to crawl into the sorts of marginalised places we see each night on the news, to bypass the standard mainstream schlock and get the real story.

Interview by James Ellis

He moved to Russia in 1996 to cover the Chechen crisis when the rest of us were nestled at home enjoying Seinfeld in its prime, photographed battle-scarred East Timor in 1999, and faced up to the desolation left by the Tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia in 2004. Life-altering experiences, sure, but neither the bloodied earth of Russia or East Timor, or the broken lives of Aceh are as personal to Sewell as the passion he has for The Block in Redfern. We caught up with Dean Sewell to chat about The Block, his photos, and what he sets out to achieve when he picks up his camera.

Your work on The Block was showcased in Visa Pour L’Image Festival of Photojournalism in France. What sort of response did the international community provide?

My work on The Block received wide coverage throughout Europe, in particular in France and Italy. It was surprising for them to see this side of Indigenous Australians. Very little work is produced on our urban Indigenous Australians and most of the stuff seen overseas are the clichéd images of Aboriginals in red dirt environments adorned in body paint with didgeridoos and message sticks.

How did you approach the task of photographing addicts in the act?

My photography is about trust. I didn’t take an image for the first two or three weeks when I began down The Block. I started by listening to people, the issues and their personal stories to develop a mutual trust and rapport. And most important for me ethically was the issue of consent – particularly with the use of drugs. I would ask each and every person every time before I would photograph them using drugs. For many intravenous drug users, addiction is not a lifestyle choice and I had to be very conscious of their right not to be photographed. I used this approach to distinguish myself from the morally bankrupt modus operandi of certain mainstream media operatives who would hide down laneways with long telephoto lenses.

Read the full story in Corker Issue 2: Winter 2008

Photo by Dean Sewell