Each of the eight images or “faces” of Brisbane, composed by three Charles Sturt University (CSU) photography lecturers Karen Donnelly, Raimond De Weerdt and Tony Nott, used 100 photographs of the faces of ordinary residents merged into a single image.

The men and women from the Brisbane suburbs of Inala, Nudgee Beach, St Lucia and Sunnybank Hills were selected according to their age and ethnic background, using statistics from the 2001 National Census carried out by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

According to the coordinator of the Faces of Brisbane project, CSU’s Karen Donnelly, the images provide an insight into the people living in these suburbs.

“After they see these images, visitors to the Brisbane Museum realise there is no such person as a ‘typical Brisbanite’,” Donnelly said.

“The images of the people of Inala, which has a relatively high Indigenous and ethnic population, contrast markedly with those from Nudgee Beach, which has the oldest median age of residents in Australia, at 58 years. 

“The Face of Brisbane was created to challenge and inform perceptions regarding our national identity. This debate has been reignited in recent years with the emergence of One Nation and the ‘Children Overboard’ controversy.”

The photographers, all from Charles Sturt University’s Albury-Wodonga Campus, completed a similar project for Albury in 2000, and are planning similar projects around metropolitan and regional Australia in coming months as part of the National Photographic Portrait Project.