"We were the original inhabitants of this area thousands of years ago. No one really knows where we came from. We have crops over there, we have these goats, we live off the land.”
Mutjila, Vatwa chief.
The Vatwa
of Angola
Regarded as the first indigenous inhabitants of the Onconcua region, the Vatwa remain semi-nomadic and grow crops and tend goats within the compounds housing their traditional huts. The most striking thing about the Vatwa are the women, covered in a red paste of ochre clay, animal fats and lotion that makes their skin shine in the unrelenting sun. Young, newly married women wear a three-pronged ekori goatskin on top of their platted dreadlocks. The wearing of certain necklaces, braids and shells represents a unique mix of personal style and significant life stages. The attire makes sense considering the isolated environment: sparse, desolate, flat.
See the exhibition
Melbourne 8 April - 6 May 2026
Address
Ladder Art Space
81 Denmark St, Kew VIC 3101
Contact
(03) 9852 8772
Opening Hours
Tue - Sat
11:30am – 5:00pm
ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Guy Needham’s inquisitive worldview was shaped by growing up in rural New Zealand in the 1970s. Today he is noted for his international work with indigenous tribes, primarily drawing on themes of identity and place within cultural narratives.
His work is a hybrid of photographic genres, sitting somewhere between documentary and portraiture. The simplicity of his pared-down style has been described as having both a quiet intensity and a subtle momentum.
His images have been exhibited in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Tokyo, and Athens, and been seen on the pages of National Geographic Traveler, CNN.com, Lonely Planet, SUITCASE Magazine, International Traveler, Portrait Magazine and AFAR.
