AustLit

'Harris, a photographer, speaks of her family background and growing up in Cowra, NSW; her Indigenous Australian mother, who is of the Wiradjuri and Ngunnawal people, and non-Indigenous father who is from Penrith, NSW; her schooling and move to Canberra on completing her Higher School Certificate in 1984; her love of photography; her traineeship in photography at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in Canberra; her enrolment in a photography course at Canberra Institute of Technology; her experience in a photographic project at Leeton; the 'After 200 years' project in 1987; her appointment as Senior Photographer at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS); her belief in the importance of technical training in photography; her stylistic preferences; attitude to digital photography; her approach to undertaking photography in indigenous communities; issues of copyright, permission and contextualization; the 'Black Women's Calendar' of 1993; her work for the Queensland Art Gallery in 1989.

'Harris discusses her loyalty to AIATSIS and reasons for leaving it; her work at the Australian Heritage Commission (AHC); her professional development grant from the Australia Council in 1995; her solo show at the High Court in Canberra in 1990; AIATSIS policy on public access to photographs of indigenous subject matter; her role on the AHC's photographic database; the concept of heritage sites; Canberra as a city and its indigenous community; Murris and Kooris in Canberra; her photo of Black Mountain titled "Bush Renewal" which earned her an award in 1993. She also speculates, at the invitation of the interviewers, on what she hopes to achieve in seven years' time, and discusses the future of pictorial archiving and photography in the digital era.' (Interview summary)