Raphaela (Rosie) Rosella is an Italian-Australian researcher, photographer and community artist from Nimbin, an over-policed, low socio-economic community in New South Wales. For two decades, she has worked at the intersection of socially engaged art and documentary photography, co-creating lens-based works alongside her sisters, friends, and family—women directly impacted by the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). Together, they have built a co-created archive spanning photography, moving image, audio, and the collection of ephemera and state-issued documents, to resist bureaucratic representations of their lived experiences.
This work, which forms the long-form project You'll Know It When You Feel It, has been exhibited extensively, including at Deichtorhallen Hamburg as part of the 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg, Germany (2026); South London Gallery, UK (2023); Institute of Modern Art, Australia (2023); Museum of Australian Photography, Australia (2022); Centre for Contemporary Photography, Australia (2022); Musée de l'Elysée, Switzerland (2020); Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb as part of the Organ Vida International Photography Festival, Croatia (2018); QUT Art Museum, Australia (2018); and the Photoquai Biennale, France (2015). Beyond the gallery, this work plays a critical role in legal and personal spaces—appearing in family albums, memorials, custody disputes, and courtrooms. It has supported successful bail and parole applications and contributed to reduced custodial sentences.
Rosella holds a Bachelor of Photography with First Class Honours from Queensland College of Art (2012) and a PhD from RMIT’s School of Art (2025). From an abolition feminist standpoint, her research challenges the foundations of archiving, the authorities that govern them, and reimagines how archives might function in non-carceral ways. In turn, her research offers a relational framework for decarcerating archives within long-form and collaborative documentary photography projects.
