Big Picture for Indigenous AFL Stars

by Joseph Sapienza

May 17, 2006

For the first time ever in Australian Football League history, all indigenous players representing the 16 teams in the competition will be photographed and commemorated in a Melbourne newspaper around the end of June.

Experienced photographer John Donegan – who sold his first picture when he was 14-years-old – was in Perth today to take shots of Eagles duo Ashley Sampi and David Wirrpanda and Fremantle Dockers players Jeff Farmer – who never does media commitments - Des Headland, Roger Hayden, Troy Cook and Dion Woods.

When eMUnews caught up with him, he was turning the insides of Subiaco Oval into a temporary photo studio, with his bags, cameras and equipment stashed in one corner while a couple of pieces of hessian were perfectly draped over part of the concrete walls.

For a shoot like this, it takes him three hours to set up and “an hour or two” to pull down. A lot of work considering the shoot will take around three minutes “if I’m wasting time”. He worked off a detailed design map he developed at an earlier shoot.

Donegan was in Brisbane last week, and after his Perth jaunt, he will touch down in Sydney next Tuesday before hitting Melbourne and finally Adelaide in the ensuing weeks.

He said the clubs and its indigenous players have embraced this refreshing concept to acknowledge their contribution to the highest level of Australian football.

“The clubs have been enormously co-operative mainly because the blokes that are in the picture are really keen on the idea, and without them being keen it would never have happened,” he said.

“There are nine clubs in Melbourne with indigenous players and they all made their players available at the same time and at the same place. I’ve never known them to co-operate on a project like that.”

Research and emailing the clubs was conducted over “five full days” and “spread over six weeks” - hence the importance of getting this project spot-on while at the same time illustrating how much work actually goes into newspaper photography.

Donegan, 39, has been photographing for 20 years and he started his career at the Melbourne Herald as a cadet. Soon after he was in London freelancing before he touched down in the volatile city of Jerusalem, where he worked for London newspaper The Guardian and Associated Press. He is now working for Melbourne’s The Age and has been for the past eight years.

The veteran snapper explains how this idea was conceived before adding it was “first tossed around late last year…around December”.

“We knew the mid-season break was near and we wanted to do something for it, (so) we tossed around a few ideas…In the past I’ve done club champions and club captains, so they were (ruled out), and someone said ‘what about doing something on the Aboriginal players’, and off that, I came up with the idea of doing one picture.”

Sampi and Wirrpanda then turned up in casual clothes and minutes later, the shoot was over. Both were keen to take part in this.

“Just (to be photographed) with all the other indigenous players (is great), (as) over the years we’ve all supported each other through a lot of different things,” Wirrpanda said.

Sampi added: “It’s the first sort of photograph that’s going to have all the indigenous players in the AFL together. They didn’t have to ask me twice, I sort of jumped in and thought it was a good idea.”

Donegan said he would discuss the possibility of making these prints available for purchase with all funds raised to be channelled into several charities.