Roslyn Poignant held a BA Hons from Sydney University. She was the daughter of Miriam Audet (a seamstress) and David Izatt (a nurse); raised in Maroubra, she attended Sydney Girls' High School and then studied history and anthropology at the University of Sydney. Working with the Australian government's film unit after matriculation, she worked with Ted Strehlow on his footage of Indigenous Australians.
A freelance writer, she worked in film and photography with her husband Axel Poignant (whom she met at the film unit), and was based in London from 1956. After Axel Poignant's death in 1986, Roslyn established the Axel Poignant Archive as a working photo library, and continued to exhibit his work in addition to pursuing her own research.
She had a particular interest in the history and culture of Indigenous Australians, and wrote books on the subject, including Professional Savages : Captive Lives and Western Spectacle (2004), discussing the lives of the Indigenous Australians who were shipped to the United States by R.A. Cunningham in response to P. T. Barnum's 1882 call for examples of 'all the uncivilized races in existence' for display to the public. Roslyn Poignant argues that these travelers were transformed into accomplished performers — 'professional savages' — although most died on tour. In 1993, the mummified body of Tambo, who was the first to die, was discovered in the basement of a funeral home in Cleveland, Ohio, and subsequently repatriated with Poignant's assistance. Poignant recounts how this event stimulated a cultural renewal within the community from which he came, and exposed the roots of present social and economic injustices experienced by Indigenous Australians.
Poignant also curated the exhibition Captive Lives: Looking for Tambo and His Companions, for the National Library of Australia. She has also compiled anthologies of South Pacific indigenous tales, including Oceanic Mythology (1967), and Myths & Legends of the South Seas (1970), and wrote Discovery Under the Southern Cross (1976), which traces the discovery and exploration of the islands and continents of the South Pacific.
Poignant was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Sydney in 2006, and died in 2019, aged 92.
Sources include Martin Thomas's obituary of Poignant in the Guardian, 17 December 2019.
