In 2011 the Gillard government introduced a carbon pricing mechanism, and the political opposition to it produced a series of public rallies across Australia. The Brisbane rally was held in the CBD, and I photographed it in the same way I photograph any public political gathering — trying to document what was actually there rather than what I thought should be there.
I photograph political events that I disagree with. I have been to rallies on many sides of many arguments, and the discipline of showing up to photograph something without letting my own position determine what I see is one of the more useful practices I have developed as a photographer. The images from this rally are not an endorsement of the politics. They are photographs of people in a public space exercising their right to be there.
On protest signs as portraits: The hand-lettered signs at political events are one of the most reliable subjects in this kind of photography. They tell you who someone is without requiring a portrait — the choice of words, the lettering style, the effort in the making. The watermelon sign (green on the outside, red on the inside) is a specific argument about the Greens Party. The “Taxed Enuff Already” signs are the Australian branch of a rhetorical tradition from elsewhere. Both are documents of a moment.
On photographing crowds you disagree with: The crowd at a right-wing rally looks, in photographs, like any other crowd — people standing in the sun, talking to each other, reading documents, laughing between the speeches. The political content is carried in the signs and the words, not in any essential difference in how people appear. That observation is itself photographic.
On the outlier: The young man with the “I’m Gay and I Don’t Vote Greens” sign came on his own and stood near the edge of the rally. I do not know his argument beyond the sign. The photograph doesn’t take a position on it. It records that he was there and that he had made a sign and that he held it up.
Brisbane’s CBD in 2011 was producing a lot of political photography. This rally was part of that period.