The Mates Collection

The Mates Collection is an historic collection of photographs by

Kevin Shaw, an Australian anthropologist and artist living and working in the Kimberley for the last nearly twenty years.

Kevin Shaw has officially entrusted AILAE with the responsibility to be custodian of it here in Europe and to provide opportunities for the collection to be known and to travel around Europe in a variety of spaces. Mates Collection and AILAE

Mates is also a significant book, published in Australia in 2003 as well as an exhibit that has traveled Australia between 2004 and 2005.

Mates, present in the Imagined Australia event of 2007 in Prato, is of historic relevance for many reasons.
First of all, images such as the Mates' pictures will not be taken again.

Many of the people, protagonists of the collection, are not going to be there and certainly that type of life and its habitat may not be.

The territories and the people are severely threatened by harsh conditions, poor health system, and constant mining interests in their land, to name just a few hazards of Kimberley life.

Perhaps more importantly Mates is a social contract between Kevin Shaw and the people who asked him to write the book and take their pictures.

Mates is an extraordinary insight in the life and history of people who want to be known not as colonial subjects nor outcast; not as "Others" nor as "welfare dependent people":

but as mates who have experienced for decades companionship in difficult as well as happy times, who have established with Kevin that rare reciprocal trust and productive understanding that makes every new day in the Kimberley worth living despite all obstacles and difficulties. A bit of history

Ailae
The Imagined Australia Project
The Mates Collection