Negotiating Nostalgia, Folding Photographs: A Practice-Led Critical Examination of Whiteness, as a Politics of Belonging

Post-WWII emigration saw over 1.6 million British citizens leave for so-called-Australia, seven of my grandfather’s siblings included. Childhood visits from overseas family were instrumental in producing and reproducing real and imaginative encounters with Australian-ness for me. This article examines folding, as part of a photographic methodology that critically explores whiteness as part of a sense of belonging, I carry, rooted within these experiences. Whiteness here is considered a form of imperial violence and is explored as an affective atmosphere of imperial duress: an encounter with the excesses or debris of imperialism. My practice addresses the complexities of understanding post-imperial spaces. Photography, like whiteness, is bound with imperialism and has long prioritized representational ideologies concepts of truth, reality and the exact. Folding operates in opposition to these. Using nonrepresentational theories to support folding as an affective methodology, I discuss the possibilities of returning to and unfixing photographic practices that perpetuate imperial violence. Folding becomes a method for unlearning whiteness through negotiating its affective qualities. This practice problematizes cultural legacies of British colonialism in so-called-Australia, which remain unsettled and unresolved, highlighting that creativity might help us critically evaluate and expand understandings of coloniality.