From hospitals to Hollywood stars and beyond: A trailblazing photographer examines his legacy

The air is frigid but the mood is warm as Mervyn Bishop makes his way into the nondescript warehouse in industrial Alexandria. The man is a celebrated photojournalist, the first Indigenous professional news photographer; the room is the archive of The Sydney Morning Herald, home to newspapers dating from 1831, along with photographs and boxes of negatives.

Bishop, 80, had two stints at the Herald between 1963 and 1986, from mixing chemicals and glazing prints in the darkroom as a cadet, to taking arresting front-page images. One of these is among the first items on show as Bishop visits the archives for a tour that coincides with a major retrospective of his work at the State Library of NSW.

A red, bound volume of broadsheet newspapers reveals the edition of January 22, 1971. Bishop lifts the corner of the page, focuses and thinks back. He and a reporter heard via police radio that a mother was speeding through the city after suspecting her children had overdosed on prescription pills. The police escorted them to St Margaret’s Hospital in Darlinghurst, where a nurse was waiting. So was Bishop, camera primed to give him the best chance at capturing the moment the three-year-old was swept up and rushed inside.

Bishop turns the page to reveal the sequel. A policeman has an arm around the mother as she walks into the hospital.

The boy not only survived but grew to become a doctor. Bishop won the Nikon News Photographer of the Year Award for 1971, the prize that later merged with the Walkley Awards. The photographer and his subject met years later at an exhibition.

Bishop has a copy of the newspaper with the award-winning photograph but zooms in on the smallest type: the credit for his work. “Microscope to find it but it’s front-page.”

The image is among the most prominent in the State Library of NSW’s exhibition Mervyn Bishop: Close Up, created after the institution acquired his archive. Bishop’s tour of the archives comes days after the show opened, for which daughter Rosemary and grandchildren Elizabeth and Isaac are in town from Dubbo for the occasion. Library curator Ronald Briggs is also in his happy place, getting a glimpse at the digital collection and seeing negatives that never made it to publication.

Fewer photographs were taken in the days of film and darkrooms. Capturing trade unionist Jack Mundey back on the tools in 1974 during the long-running dispute over the fate of Kings Cross took less than a roll of film. “Six, 12, about 20 pictures there,” Bishop says, inspecting the negatives. “That’s enough.”

Bishop turns to the printed page. “Look at him with all that hair. He was back at work. They had a lot of strikes.”

Before the endless capacity of digital photography and the advent of smartphones, planning and thought were essential. Bishop says he asked Mundey to “make out he was working” as leaning on a shovel would have been of no use.

“His group stopped a lot of demolition of buildings up at Kings Cross, which is good because otherwise it would be all high-rise.”

Bishop’s most famous image was taken after he first left the Herald, while working for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. In August 1975 he captured then-prime minister Gough Whitlam passing red earth to land rights activist Vincent Lingiari in a ceremonial handover of Gurindji land in the Northern Territory. Bishop encouraged the men to recreate the moment outside in the sunshine. Over time it became a celebrated moment for Indigenous rights and, 50 years on, the image has entered history.

It was not Bishop’s first encounter with Whitlam. In 1969 he photographed the then-opposition leader at home in Cabramatta, Whitlam’s large frame folded into a couch, and feet in sandals, during an impromptu press conference. Again, the negatives show Bishop took about 20 shots.

Herald photographer James Brickwood is amazed at how candid the result is, given how strictly political figures guard their public image these days.

Did Bishop think much about it? “Not really. His house, he can do what he likes.” Plus, Bishop points out, he was not in control of how editors would use it or how closely the photograph would be cropped.

Bishop does not complain about the size of the deep front-page display of Hollywood star Maureen O’Hara, who in 1970 was offering $5000 for the return of lost jewels. He reminisces about meeting world bantamweight boxing champion Lionel Rose before he left for the US in 1968, the two bonding over growing up in regional areas (Brewarrina in north-west NSW for Bishop, Warragul and Moe in eastern Victoria in Rose’s case). Bishop brightens when speaking of taking the portrait of royal photographer Cecil Beaton at Admiralty House, and scrolls through a selection of nearly 3000 digitised photographs from his Herald days.

Along with brawling aldermen, dramas with the electric trains, car crashes and rescues is a picture of an excited eight-year-old who had won a trip to Canberra to watch the Philips Soccer League grand final in 1980. The contest winner? Future Socceroo Mark Bosnich.

Also at the top of the world was leading hand painter Bob Millar, who on June 26, 1973, was applying a coat of paint to the Harbour Bridge with all of the safety equipment of the era: none. Bishop was in his street clothes.

“I was OK until he just stepped near the edge of it, and I froze. I couldn’t move, he had to help me down.

“Just seeing him standing near the edge, long way down, either onto the roadway or into the water. People forget how many people died building it [16 during construction].”

Bishop inherited a love of photography from his mother and early experiences in a friend’s darkroom in Brewarrina. “I had a go in the darkroom at 10 or 11 and I was smitten, smitten,” Bishop says in a separate interview. “The smell of the chemicals and watching the image come up in the developer: just loved it.”

The Herald was a formative place for Bishop, who completed a four-year cadetship and formal training at Sydney Technical College.

“I know at the Herald we had a couple of guys who were excellent technicians; perfect, perfect pictures. But that was very staid. What does that mean? That is the bottom line: what does it mean?

“You’ve got to create something extra. Sometimes the story can be written but it’s dry-as unless you see a photograph.”

The newspaper was not always a place Bishop felt at ease. There was tension with management and a simmering resentment that his award-winning work had not led to any increase in pay.

The last surprise that archivists have uncovered is Bishop’s personnel file. The latest documents are towards the top – “when I got moved out”, he says with a wry laugh, explaining how it says he resigned and finished on August 8, 1986, and is to receive six weeks’ pay in lieu of notice.

Bishop does not dwell on his departure but says of the promotion of one photographic manager, “We thought people might have got a better sort of a go but we didn’t.”

The file contains a clipping celebrating the 1971 award, headlined “Herald man is top news photographer”, and a copy of the February 1965 edition of Dawn magazine marking Bishop’s groundbreaking appointment as a Herald cadet, the start of his career as the first Aboriginal press photographer.

Brickwood tries, without much success, to wind Bishop up about how much he has changed in 60 years. “Good-looking bloke there, Merv.”

The response is sharp: “Back in the Dreamtime.”

The free exhibition Mervyn Bishop: Close Up is at the State Library of NSW until February 2027. Tim Dobbyn’s biography of Bishop, Black, White + Colour (Ginninderra Press), is out now.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.