Charlie Bliss

I've always believed that history isn't truly alive until people can see it. Words on a page can inform, but a photograph can make you feel like you were standing there. That belief is what drives everything I do behind the camera.

I'm a photographer based in Darwin, and for years I've been captivated by one of Australia's most remarkable but least visually told stories: the relationship between Macassan trepangers and Aboriginal communities in northern Australia.

This connection stretches back centuries, predating British colonisation, and represents one of the earliest chapters of trade and cultural exchange on this continent. Yet when I went looking for ways to understand and share it, I found the story locked away in academic reports and dense historical texts, accessible to researchers but invisible to everyday Australians.

That gap is what pulled me in. I saw an opportunity to do what I do best: take a complex, important history and turn it into something people can see, feel, and connect with in seconds.

I was a finalist in the 2024 National Portrait Awards, but the thread running through all of my work is the same: using photography to make people pause and pay attention to stories that matter.

Through a Churchill Fellowship, I want to travel to research this history more deeply, meet with communities, historians, and institutions connected to this exchange, and build a body of photographic work that finally gives this chapter of history the visual voice it deserves.

My long-term goal is simple: to help everyday Australians understand and appreciate this piece of our shared history, not through another report, but through images that stop them in their tracks and make them want to learn more.