Tace Stevens, 'Heal Our Past, Build Our Future'
73 x 49.6 x 5 cm
Photographic Print on Canson Rag
Edition + Price TBA
 
Uncle Peter Robinson poses for a portrait in the big boys dormitory at the Kinchela Boys Home (KBH) site, 4.5 hrs north of Sydney, Australia. KBH was a NSW state-run institution near Kempsey, that operated from 1924 – 1970. Hundreds of Aboriginal boys, who were forcibly removed from their families, were sent here. The purpose of this institution and others like it, was to assimilate Aboriginal children into white society. The policies that allowed for this created what are today referred to as the Stolen Generations. 
 
This photo is from a larger body of work, We Were Just Little Boys, which is about these little boys returning as old men, and explores their relationship with this site, through observational photography and portraiture. 
 
 
Tace Stevens is a Noongar and Spinifex visual storyteller based in Perth, Western Australia. She is a selftaught documentary photographer with a film degree from the Australian Film and Television Radio School. With a background in community development and education, story sovereignty and authenticity are important to her work. 
 
In 2023, Tace received a grant from Magnum Foundation to work with the Survivors of the Kinchela Boys Home, a state-run institution that forcibly removed hundreds of Indigenous boys from their families between 1924 and 1970. This work, We Were Just Little Boys, featured in "On Country: Photography from Australia", a group exhibition at Les Rencontres d’Arles, and was published July 2025 as a debut monograph by Tall Poppy Press.