Artist Statement
Pardu is a daguerreotype photographic series of Kaurna animals. Most animals documented in the Kaurna language were recorded in the colonial period of the 1830s and 1840s by European colonists. Most names were documented in word lists with simple written descriptions, making identifying the exact species difficult for the contemporary Kaurna language community. In only one instance, bird specimens were collected along with their Kaurna names, but unfortunately, the list of names and the bird specimens were separated, and the bird’s current location are unknown. Technologies such as drawing, painting, and daguerreotype photography were available to European colonists in Adelaide on the Kaurna nation; however, these technologies were not used to document Kaurna animal names. This series explores the hypothetical idea of what if the European colonists used the new Daguerreotype technology to catalogue Kaurna animals. If the colonists had used this technology and recorded the names, we would better understand Kaurna animal naming today.
