Charles Alfred Woolley

The portrait depicts the 65-year-old Truganini from Bruni Island, one of the most famous leaders in the resistance against the expulsion of the Tasmanians by white settlers. Truganini was long considered the last surviving Tasmanian woman. For this reason, she was photographed in 1866 for the Colonial Exhibition in Melbourne, Australia. Her photograph became museum-based evidence of a vanished Aboriginal Tasmanian culture and was regarded as document recording genocide perpetrated by Europeans.