Taken
Raymond Mather
Taken [detail] 2025
Portrait of Karen Rice
Digital photographic print
80 x 120 cm
About the Artwork
This portrait responds to Australia’s history of forced adoption, formally recognised through the Royal Commission enquiries and official government apologies in 2012 and 2013. Between the 1950s and the late 1970s, more than 200,000 pregnant, unwed, vulnerable women and young girls were pressured into relinquishing their babies for adoption.
Karen’s story emerges from this landscape of shame, disconnection and long-term trauma caused by this practice. Photographed with her knitted booties in Murwillumbah, she stands as both an individual survivor and a representative of many. The portrait seeks to honour lived experience with restraint and dignity. It offers a quiet acknowledgement of what was taken, and gestures toward the strength that remains.
About the Artist
Raymond Mather is a New South Wales–based photographic artist with over four decades of experience across photography, theatre, dance, and visual arts. His practice is informed by an extensive career as a choreographer and movement specialist for stage and screen, including work on Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom, as well as projects with Bell Shakespeare, Sydney Theatre Company, and ABC Television.
Raymond’s photographic work explores presence, psychology, and embodied identity, often developing through long-term collaborative relationships with his subjects. His photography has been exhibited nationally and selected for major exhibitions, including Northern Exposure at Glasshouse Regional Gallery, Port Macquarie, and the SHIMMER Photographic Biennale. He was a semi-finalist in the Moran Photographic Portrait Prize, and a finalist in the Percival Photographic Portrait Prize (2018).