About

Andrew D Flanagan is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, storyteller from Australia's Wonnorua country, Hunter Valley New South Wales. Andrew's work in preservation and conservation has taken him across 127 countries and 7 continents, documenting peoples, cultures, and country. His mission, as given to him by his mentor and elder, Uncle Dig Jones, is help bring everyone back under the lore of land. He was the one that redefined Andrew's work to sharing story, lore, to retrieve forward ancient knowledge and ways of being to bring people back into their role as custodians of creation.

Living in New York City and travelling the world with corporate photographic work, it was a trip to Alaska that changed his life when he was forced to leave the US and found himself with nothing, living out of a vintage Land Rover that he had to rebuild by hand, fighting an ongoing illness that required another operation to remove. It was then he met Dig; and spent time out on country, reconnecting to land he had ancestral connection to, with ties through Cape York, ritual and ceremony for healing, and coming into relation with the spirit of place - this was more than the start of a new chapter in Andrew’s life - it was the signing of a contract with Dig and the ancestors, one that bound him to a purpose that would span lifetimes. The work he began with Dig was not just for him, not just for this moment, but for generations to come. It was a commitment to bring the ancient knowledge systems into the modern world, to bridge the gap between past and future, and to do so with the humility and respect that such a task demands.

Through Dig, Andrew was introduced to the Indigenous knowledge systems and ways of knowing that had been nurtured and protected by First Nations peoples for tens of thousands of years. These were not just teachings to be learned—they were lifeways to be lived. They were patterns of being that connected him back to the land, to his ancestors, and to a way of seeing the world that was as ancient as it was relevant to the challenges of today. Dig didn’t just show Andrew a new path; he opened his eyes to the songlines etched in the landscape, to the stories embedded in the stars, and to the responsibility that comes with being in relation to all things. It changed his work, his vision, the way he operated in the world. Redefining everything he did in a new way.