Photography project update; ABC story; New nationalities coming out of the woodwork

Mark Thomson
Jun 19
2 min read

Portrait sessions in the Hobart Library

The photography sessions have been a little sparser this time around, but they have been gradually building and they have all been a lot of fun and have varied. There has a been a lot of laughter and even a few tears and as I've been capturing some behind-the-scenes footage of the photo sessions, it's been interesting to how each person's personality has shone out in different ways as they find themselves in front of the camera. As I've said before, being in the studio space is quite intimate and lends itself quite well to people opening and sharing stories, and we've had plenty of really interesting conversations over the last few weeks. I'm posting a few pictures below which I hope give a bit of a window into this.

ABC Story and some of the interesting outcomes

Recently Luke from ABC Hobart did a story about the podcast and the exhibition, which highlighted the fact that I was still looking for people from a range of nationalities.

Click here to read the article.

The response has been pretty impressive, and I spent a good part of my weekend responding to emails, some of which have resulted in follow up calls and a couple of confirmed interviews with people from such diverse places as Yemen, the Isle of Man, Laos and the Solomon Islands. I've also had a lot of responses from Welsh people, which gave me the unusual problem of having to find a way of choosing out of several options.

I've also had contacts from people from some very rare and obscure places, which will hopefully result in further interviews over the next month. Who has heard of St Lucia, for example ? Or imagined that there would be someone from the Falkland Islands or the British external territory of St Helena ? I should just add that, though these places are not sovereign nations on their own, they are listed as countries for the purposes of the Australian Census. The rule of thumb seems to be that if they are represented separately in international sports competition ( FIFA, for example has 211 national member associations, with 11 affiliated associations, while there are only 193 members states of the UN ), they are represented in the census.

With that in mind, here is my most up-to-date list of countries of birth I'm still looking for. If a country is not there, I've either done it. or it's so rare I haven't thought to include it ( e.g Mali, Guyana, Luxembourg, Mozambique or the Marshall Islands)

EUROPE