For nearly two centuries, photojournalists have played a vital role in documenting global events, influencing our view of the world and shaping how we view the future. Tim Page: The very edge of the brightest light highlights how the capacity for photojournalists to bear witness continues to carry meaning, even in an image-saturated era marked by decreasing attention spans and attacks on press freedom.
As Dr Miriam Deprez writes in her essay for The very edge of the brightest light, “Page’s photographs remind us that in an age of visual excess, we still urgently need photography. Not because photographs resolve violence, but because they ask us to remain with it. And now more than ever, we need to learn how to look with, rather than simply look at.”
To celebrate the final weekend of Tim Page: The very edge of the brightest light, join us for a series of conversations with leading voices in photojournalism and visual politics, including multi award-winning photographer and filmmaker Barat Ali Batoor, Marianne Harris, Page’s long-time partner and manager, and Griffith University academics Dr Chari Larsson, Dr Miriam Deprez and Dr Samid Suliman.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
10-11am | Keynote: Barat Ali Batoor
11.15am-12.15pm | Panel: Barat Ali Batoor, Dr Chari Larsson, Dr Miriam Deprez. Chair: Dr Samid Suliman
12.30-1.30pm | In Conversation: Marianne Harris, with exhibition co-curator Carrie McCarthy
SPEAKER BIOS
Barat Ali Batoor is a multi-award-winning photographer, filmmaker, and educator whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. He is the winner of the 2013 Nikon-Walkleys Photo of the Year and directed the Walkley-nominated documentary Batoor: A Refugee Journey, which won Best Director at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. A two-time TEDx speaker, his major exhibition at the State Library of Victoria attracted over 170,000 visitors. Batoor currently serves as Lead Organiser at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, teaches photojournalism at RMIT University—where he received the 2021 Dean’s Award for exemplary teaching—and is developing a new documentary film premiering at MIFF 2027.
Dr Miriam Deprez is an academic, photojournalist, and research fellow with Griffith University’s Disrupting Violence Beacon. Her PhD research examined the visual politics of occupation and resistance in Palestine and Kashmir, emphasising collaborative and decolonial visual methodologies. Her research and practice also focus on post-conflict environments, particularly on understanding and reducing the impacts of militarised indigenous landscapes. At Griffith, Deprez has taught human rights journalism, security studies, and analogue photography. She has previously worked as a freelance journalist, editor, and photographer, covering Europe, the Middle East, Russia, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Australia, and also currently serves as secretary and field researcher for the Australian NGO SafeGround, which aims to mitigate harm caused by legacy and emerging weapons.
Marianne (Mau) Harris is an independent television producer and long-term partner of photojournalist Tim Page OAM. She now manages Page’s estate and archive.
Dr Chari Larsson is Senior Lecturer in art history and theory at the Queensland Collage of Art and Design (QCAD). Her research focuses on theories of images, and philosophies of representation. Her current research project is investigating visual life narratives during periods of war and conflict. Larsson’s books include Didi-Huberman and the image (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), and she has published in journals such as the Journal of Art Historiography, Senses of Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society.
Dr Samid Suliman is Senior Lecturer, Migration and Security, in the School of Humanities, Languages, and Social Science at Griffith University. He is a member of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, and a lead researcher with the Griffith University Climate Action Beacon and the Disrupting Violence Beacon. His expertise is in migration and mobility, globalisation and culture, political science and political theory, climate change and postcolonial studies. Among his recent publications is Performance, Resistance, and Refugees (co-edited with Suzanne Little and Caroline Wake, Routledge, 2023).
