All of us – Michael Lawrence

This week is Cultural Diversity week in Victoria so I thought I would go with a theme this week with my posts of “cultural diversity”. One of the things that I love about living in the northern suburbs of Melbourne is the eclectic mix on people, food and traditions that I see everyday. On my street alone there are people who were born in Australia, Lebanon, Italy, Greece, The Maldives, Malta, and England (and they are just the neighbours I know). I live close to Sydney Road are are able to enjoy food from around the world: Turkish, Chinese, Lebanese, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Italian, Greek, to name a few. I think I live in one of the best places in the world.
Michael Lawrence was inspired to start a photo expose of people who called Australia home after the racial riots at Cronulla beach in December 2005. He saw this as ugly and very un-Australian and wanted to understand more about Australia today and the people who lived here. His goal was to take a photo of at least one person of each nationality who now call Australia home. The person had to be born in their country of origin and chosen to make Australia their home.
Lawrence has included more than 220 photos in his book. The photos cover the whole page and are organized according to geographical location such as Europe, Oceania, Middle East etc. Each photo is taken in a place that is familiar to that person, in most cases their homes. Some have chosen to wear traditional clothing from their country of origin and others have chosen to be photographed in the style of their new home. Each person has a paragraph or two written about them which includes their name, their year and place of birth and their date of arrival in Australia. It also includes a little about the history of their choice to come to Australia and how they have create a place of belonging in Australia.

It is a lovely coffee table book which is nice and bright and can be read a little at a time. Most, if not all the photos have been taking in Victoria and I was surprise to recognize a few friends in the photos. I love multicultural Australia and I loved reading the stories of these people who share this wonderful country with me. 8/10

Note: All of us was used in 2008 as part of the Victorian Governments community harmony campaign. A video which uses Lawrence's photo can be seen here