Photography marks the beginning of my family’s Australian history. Before setting foot on shore, my parents stood posed on the deck of their £10 passage—smartly dressed, young, and anglo-centric. They smile steadily for the camera. The new land lies ahead, and a journalist captures an image, a symbol of immigration’s promise.

The photographs before you are presented as singular portraits and family composites. Developed by Francis Galton in the 1870s, composite photography was a method of forecasting a family’s physical features. It also serves as a metaphor for perception—how the mind retrieves and assembles singular images, imagining the shared traits that bind a family’s identity.