The big picture: David Charles Collins and Tony Albert’s Hulk

But how to approach it? Collins says he “didn’t want to just be another white person rocking up, going: ‘OK, I’m going to take some photos of the local community,’ and buggering off.” So he decided to let the kids take the lead.

What they very quickly decided, after some brainstorming, was to don superhero masks and homemade costumes and make for the tlocal car scrapyard. Collins was delighted by this for several reasons, not least because his work explores how archetypes, superheroic or otherwise, can connect people across borders and generate empathy and empowerment. But also, he says, the kids from this “very intimate and tight community” were “quite reserved. But once we had this universal language of superheroes and movies to share, they really let their hair down. We were running after them trying to keep up.”

One of the children posed as Superman; another as Captain America. In this picture, Nakisha Nelson hunkering down on a car roof is, despite the lo-fi cardboard costume, unmistakably the Hulk. “It was really delightful how much the kids got into the physicality of the characters they were playing,” says Collins.According to Albert, superheroes “have a powerful connection to Aboriginal culture and our stories of creation. We have incredible people and animals who did these amazing things in terms of land formation and our dreaming.” But there may be a more down-to-earth moral to be drawn from the series, which is showing in Arles next month. “Superheroes might fly or become invisible, but in our own communities, what about helping our elders, or retaining culture?” says Arnold. “That can be a superpower in its own right.”

Warakurna Superheroes is part of On Country: Photography from Australia at Les Rencontres d’Arles, France, from 7 July to 5 October

Photograph by David Charles Collins and Tony Albert