Coloured Diggers [panel 4]

Panel four of 'Coloured Diggers' a four panelled painting exploring the social and political legacies of Indigenous military service during the Second World War, and specifically the lack of recognition felt by many following their repatriation. For the fourth panel Albert has reproduced one of the most famous war photographs of all time, Joe Rosenthal’s Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, 23 February 1945. Taken while Rosenthal was working as an Associated Press journalist it captured the moment a group of six US Marines raised the US flag on the top of Mount Suribachi following the 2nd battle of Iwo Jima. Instantly popular for its emotive, heroic portrayal of the victors it won Rosenthal the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for photography and has been reproduced 1000 of times since. During the war the image was used in the promotion of the 7th US was bond drive. It is also one of the most parodied of photographs. In the 1960s anti-war activists in the United States reproduced the image altering the flag to bear a peace symbol; in the 2000s the gay pride movement inserted a Rainbow flag. In Australia it has most notably been appropriated by the artist Chips Mackinolty who chose the image for his 1977 Earthworks poster ‘Land rights dance, Balmain Town Hall’ and again in 1979 for a historical poster detailing the designing and raising of the first Land Rights flag at Aurukun in Queensland. Talking about this poster Mackinolty stated that while in retrospect the use of this image was ‘hardly original’ he ‘used it because it was such a powerful and striking propaganda image/visual’. Albert’s own appropriation of the same image years later acknowledges the significance of the political poster movement of the 1970s in supporting Indigenous civil rights in Australia and at the same time underscores the image’s resonance as propaganda. Symbolically in Albert’s work it is a strong visual statement which acts to stake a claim for the contribution of so many Indigenous Servicemen and women of the Second World War to the movement for constitutional equality within Australian society. At the same time it commemorates their service and acts to reclaim their rightful place in our national military histories and collections.


Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program 2014