Image: 

Alfonso Puautjimi, 2024

Tobias Titz

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2025 Finalist

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following piece features the name and image of someone who has passed.

When Daisy Kadibil was eight years old, she walked along 1,600km of rabbit-proof fence with her sister and cousin to find her way back to Country.

She looks at the camera, one eye scrutinising, one eye shut. In black and white polaroid, the lines of experience on her face etch dark into the image, contrasting the white tufts of her hair that melt into the flat, pale background. On the opposite side of the diptych is a second frame, a blank negative where Daisy has carved a message:

‘I come from Jigalong they took me away but I walked all around country back to where I was born I came back’

Portrait of Daisy Kadibil, 2009

These words make up half of a story told through portraiture by Tobias Titz, a German photographer who has dedicated much of his professional life to telling the stories of First Nations peoples in remote communities such as the Pilbara desert, where Kadibil was born.

Titz recounts this moment of ‘meeting royalty’ in his kitchen, surrounded by an eclectic collection of First Nations artwork. Behind him is a warm painting by Ngaruwanajirri Group artist Alfonso Puautjimi of a bicycle surrounded by desert. 

Titz has been nominated as a finalist for the 2025 National Photographic Portrait Prize for his portrait of the Tiwi Islands artist, which will be his second consecutive nomination for this prize and third nomination overall.

But this polaroid project is not a recent endeavour, with the first instance of depicting First Nations communities through the diptych work beginning in 2006. 

‘A friend of mine, she was working in the Pilbara region at the time and so that’s when that first project came together,’ Titz shares. He spoke to the leader of the Port Hedland Language Centre, who highlighted the upcoming anniversary of the 1967 Referendum.

‘She said, let’s do a project asking people what they think.’ He explained. ‘So, we applied for funding and didn’t get any, but I said let’s do it anyway.’

After moving to Australia, Titz noticed a silence of First Nations voices in policies affecting their communities, instilling a desire to increase representation. 

‘I never heard any opinions and thoughts from First Nations people about all this stuff, so I thought it might be good to ask them about it or see what they think.’

Titz incorporates a unique element of collaboration into his portraiture, achieved through a combination of polaroids and etchings.

‘It’s two negatives or two images. One is the portrait, and then there’s a second blank one.’ According to Titz, the camera stays where it is, and the person walks out of the frame for him to take the blank background image. ‘I wash it, and then give it to the person, and they can etch into the negative.’

The subject etches into the emulsion to reveal their message in black scratches. Some people write a message, some draw their totem, some etch their signature into the negative.

‘Most people, their first language is not English,’ Titz says, explaining the diversity of responses. ‘I took photos of some people who couldn’t write.’ 

He says that in twenty years, no two subjects have ever created the same etching, despite having taken the project all over Australia.

‘I’ve set up these sorts of daylight studios all over the country,’ he shares of the process. ‘I just try to find a shady spot.’ 

His vintage Horseman camera does not need electricity, so the potential locations are incredibly flexible. The on-shoot kit consists of a bucket of water, the camera, a white sheet for the portrait background and daylight. 

After shooting, Titz hangs the developing polaroids up wherever available. He recalls hanging strings of photos inside his tent while following the Martu community on a protest against proposed uranium mining in Karlamilyi National Park.

The expanded exhibition was first toured in 2011-2012 and platformed issues such as the 1946 Pilbara Strike, the Freedom Rides and Kevin Rudd’s apology to First Nations peoples.

‘We went to five, six communities,’ he recalled. ‘They gave workshops on all the different events, they had a band playing, put on a barbecue, showed the works. People really enjoyed it.’

One of the driving values behind the project was to create a two-way relationship between subject and photographer. 

‘I thought it was a bit one sided, you know, taking a portrait of somebody, but they didn’t have an input in it.’ He explains adapting his method to involve subjects in the image-making process. The immediacy of polaroid development also caters to this exchange. 

‘I always give the positive to the person, and then I keep the negative, so they get something out of it straight away as well.’ 

Titz points out an image taken of former boxer, Noel Charlie. 

‘He came to me and said: Hey, can you take my photo?, because he wanted that little photo to have.’

This portrait was later nominated for the 2012 National Portrait Prize and now looms large in Titz’s living room.

Titz fell in love with the polaroid medium very early in his career. 

‘Everything is very slow and still, it’s sort of like meditation.’ 

His signature style is inspired by the work of August Sander and Robert Frank: figures he was exposed to during his studies in Munich. He recalls a university assignment that challenged him to take photos in the style of Sander.

‘I took a photo of a railway worker in Munich at the station. I still remember the image: in the background you get the railway going into the horizon, and he’s standing there in the front with his outfit and his tools.’

He now teaches this formative assignment to his own students at Monash University. 

However, fellow photographer and friend Andrew Chapman attests that Titz is ‘as individual as you can get in photography these days’.

As both a subject of Titz’s work and a photographer himself, Chapman provides a technical insight into the skill behind Titz’s seemingly effortless style. He reveals that the margin for error in large format photography is wider than other forms, but that Titz’s ability to get the shot almost every time is both infuriating and incredible.

‘He gets an intensity that is hard to achieve from subjects.’ Chapman says. ‘It’s not just the polaroid film style; it’s the way he captures people.’

With regards to reconciliation with First Nations peoples, Titz says ‘there’s still so many decisions made for them, but not with them.’

He explains that while photography is not going to change that, it can highlight certain stories, bringing them out into the open. 

‘That might make people more likely to understand it.’

Sharon Bulkeley, Senior Curator at the Museum of Australian Democracy where Titz has exhibited several times, says of the photographer that ‘his professionalism, flexibility, enthusiasm and creativity, combined with his friendly personality and great talent as a photographer make him an asset to any team.’

Titz is currently collaborating with Arts Project Australia, a Melbourne-based disabled artist collective, on the next phase of his polaroid project, a collaboration he says is ‘inspiring’.