| Title | 4. THE ENDURING PRESENCE OF THE EUCALYPTUS TREE |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | A PHOTO ESSAY |
| Contributor | Natasha Fijn(author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.63308/63878687083054.ch04 |
| Landing page | https://www.whpress.co.uk/publications/2025/03/04/meam-2/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Natasha Fijn |
| Publisher | The White Horse Press |
| Published on | 2025-07-01 |
| Long abstract | The strength of the photo essay in multispecies anthropological research is the close integration between still images and the accompanying text as a form of ethnographic narrative. How can the structure of the photo essay provide an experimental medium for conceptualising multispecies ethnography, while communicating engagement with more-than-human subjects? The photo essay included here employs an experimental creative approach featuring large, lone eucalypts as significant beings on the fringes of the reserves and suburbs of Canberra, the capital city of Australia. As sentinels, these canopy trees have witnessed different forms of human presence over as much as a five-century lifespan: from ancestral Ngunnuwal making marks on such trees, viewed by individual Aboriginal Australians as kin; to present-day workers in newly developed suburbs manicuring newly formed lawns and gardens beneath the shade of these trees. The author has produced other multispecies-oriented photo essays as an ongoing form of experimentation with the sensory and juxtaposition of still images with text to form an ethnographic narrative. The photo essay comprises a series of images in two parts with accompanying text forming explanatory captions, the combination of image and text then helping to build a multispecies story. The first part of the photo essay connects with individual Eucalypts in reserves, while the second part foregrounds individual trees within a new development, the suburb of Ginninderry. The author highlights how the photo essay can be effective in allowing for more-than-human subjectivity and agency. The focus on individual eucalypt trees within the photo essay is an extension of the author’s connection with individual trees and a part of her ongoing creative expression with a focus on sensorial and multispecies entanglements with significant others. Accompanying the photo essay is a description in the form of an ‘artnographic statement’ of Fijn’s methodology in combining multispecies ethnography with photography, followed by an explanatory section connecting the differing Abo- riginal Australian perspectives from those of wider settler-Australian attitudes towards individual Eucalypts in the context of Australia’s capital. |
| Page range | pp. 101–118 |
| Print length | 18 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
| Media | 13 illustrations |
Natasha Fijn is Director of the Australian National University’s Mongolia Institute. She has been awarded a mid-career ARC Future Fellowship to conduct research on ‘A Multi-species Anthropological Approach to Influenza’ (2022–2026). Natasha wrote a seminal multispecies ethnography based in Mongolia, Living with Herds: Human-animal Coexistence in Mongolia (2011). She has co-edited five books and several journal volumes, including three special issues oriented toward visual anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking, and three engaging with multispecies and sensory anthropology in the journals Inner Asia (2020), The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2020) and Anthropology Today (2023). She recently (2023) published a co-edited book with Routledge, Nurturing Alternative Futures: Living with Diversity in a More-than-human World.