My work ‘Mourning an elder’ is a finalist in the 2013 Moran Photo Prize

I was invited to photograph the funeral of distinguished Aboriginal elder Richard Phillips, by his son. During the funeral service at the Block, Redfern, I photographed this mourner.

For me, funeral photography is subversive as it challenges society’s fixation with wealth, status and materialism by showing people are at their finest when they are compassionate and humane.