In 1994 Fiona Foley began working with images of Badtjala ancestors from museum collections. She used herself as the model for a series of photographs based on an image of an unnamed female ancestor, putting herself into the frame of ethnographic photography. As critic and author Benjamin Genocchio noted: 

Originally, Foley thought of using her mother’s naked body, but ultimately decided on her own. This was a brave decision . . . The photographs more or less replicate the pose and adornments of the archival image . . . In black and white, the photographs imitate the anthropological quality of the archival image. At the same time a sense of life, power and identity is restored to the figure through the re-enactment. This Badtjala woman has a name and is in control of the scene we are contemplating.