Raphaela (Rosie) Rosella is an Italian-Australian researcher, photographer, and community arts practitioner from Nimbin, an over-policed community in New South Wales, Australia. 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 archive, which forms the long-term project You'll Know It When You Feel It, has been exhibited extensively at leading institutions including Deichtorhallen Hamburg as part of the 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg, Germany (2026); South London Gallery, UK (2024); 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 Photoquai Biennale, France (2015).
Beyond the gallery, You'll Know It When You Feel It continues to shape legal, personal, and community contexts, appearing in family albums, memorials, custody disputes, and courtrooms. It has supported successful bail and parole applications and contributed to reduced custodial sentences, demonstrating how creative practice can generate tangible impacts outside conventional artistic contexts. Its impact has been recognised through the Distinguished Creative Arts Doctoral Student Award, Deans and Directors of Creative Arts, Australia (2025); the Social Impact Award, Royal Photographic Society Awards, UK (2023); Second Prize in the Philip Jones Griffiths Award, UK (2022); and PhMuseum Women Photographers Grant, Italy (2020). Rosella’s practice has also received significant recognition, including First Prize (Singles Portrait Category), World Press Photo Contest, Netherlands (2015), and Australian Photobook of the Year, Momento Pro, Australia (2015). In 2014, she was one of 12 photographers selected worldwide (and the first Australian woman) to attend World Press Photo’s prestigious Joop Swart Masterclass in Amsterdam.
Alongside her independent practice, Rosella has more than fourteen years of experience in Community Arts and Cultural Development (CACD) through her work with Beyond Empathy (BE), one of Australia’s leading community arts organisations. Beginning as a participant, she later progressed into roles including photographer, lead artist, producer, curator and project manager. She has since co-developed and delivered numerous complex, multi-year projects connecting the arts and communities with sectors including health, education, employment, immigration and youth justice.
In 2025, Rosella completed her PhD at RMIT University's School of Art. From an abolition feminist standpoint, her research challenges the foundations of archival practice and the authorities that govern representation and reimagines how archives might function in non-carceral ways. In doing so, her research offers a relational framework for decarcerating archives within long-form collaborative documentary photography and socially engaged art projects. She also holds a Bachelor of Photography with First Class Honours from Queensland College of Art (2012) and a Graduate Certificate of Indigenous Trauma and Recovery Practice, from the University of Wollongong.
