ABSTRACT
The Strehlow Collection has over 8,000 photographic images in its collection with most of these made by T.G.H. Strehlow (there are smaller collections acquired by the Strehlow Research Centre through donation or other means—for example, the photographic work of Otto Tschirn and the Latz Collection). This chapter will document and analyse a selection of archival photographs related to a historical moment in the life of the Hermannsburg mission. This moment is historically significant marking when water was first piped to the mission community of Hermannsburg. The chapter deploys Jussi Parikka’s concept of “geomedia” to analyse these photographs that telescope the human cultural “entanglement” with the natural world of Central Australia. Parikka’s materialist account of media is based on a geologically framed epistemology out of which a particular analysis of these images can be developed. Whereas T.G.H. Strehlow conceived of a totemic geography (1970) linking cultural traditions to place, Parikka’s concept of geomedia connects culture to place through the realm of media. This chapter aligns the concept of geomedia to the medium theorists of the twentieth century and Wolfgang Ernst’s characterization of the archive with its meanings and distributed memories.
