Barbara McGrady

Barbara McGrady (born 1950) is an Aboriginal Australian photographer and photojournalist based in Sydney, New South Wales. She is the first Indigenous Australian photojournalist.

Early life and education Barbara McGrady was born in 1950 in Mungindi, New South Wales. from the north-west of NSW and southern Queensland.

McGrady started taking photos of her family and surroundings as a teenager with a camera her mother bought her. Her fascination with photo journalism was sparked by black and white photographs of black sportsmen and sportswomen in magazines like Time and Life, National Geographic, Esquire and Reader's Digest.

She is the first female Indigenous photojournalist in Australia.

She specialises in recording Indigenous Australian sporting figures and events. Among the famous people McGrady has photographed are prominent activist for Australia's First Nations People, Gary Foley, a human rights activist and historian at Victoria University, Melbourne, It is available on SBS on Demand.

Awards 2014: Anthony Mundine Courage Award, part of the inaugural National Indigenous Human Rights Awards at the Australian Centre for Photography, 3 November – 9 December 2017, curated by Sandy Evans and complemented by NITV & ACP Online Resource 2020: Campbelltown Arts Centre 2020: Artist Talk with John Janson-Moore 2020: As part of the 2020 Biennale of Sydney, McGrady's work was hung in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Her 2013 image of TJ Hickey's family was hung in the gallery's Entrance Court. However the Biennale was cancelled and the Gallery closed in line with the NSW government's social distancing regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia. 2023: Barbara McGrady: Australia Has a Black History, at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, December 2023 - June 2024.

Collections Some of McGrady's works are held in the Australian Museum in Sydney.

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