Carol Jerrems died young, aged 30, and that is the least important aspect of her art. The National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition of her portrait photography is a revelation – of an age, of the foresight of the National Gallery of Australia in collecting her full archive, and of what can be achieved with a Pentax Spotmatic single reflex camera loaded with black-and-white film.
One of the joys of the exhibition is that it includes some of Jerrems’ early work made for assessment at Prahran College in Melbourne where she was taught by the film-maker Paul Cox. Three portfolios, each the final submission for that year’s course, show how her eye developed from her first series of captured images from the Melbourne Show, to her final year photo essay, Jim Fields, a portrait.
A self-portrait taken in 1979, the year before she died aged 30 of a rare liver disease.Credit: Carol Jerrems
She once said, “the moment preserved is an exchange”. Jerrems’ ability to capture that moment, connecting with her subjects while fearlessly examining their humanity, led to her first commission. A Book About Australian Women, with text by Virginia Fraser, published in 1974, was funded by the Whitlam government’s recently established Australia Council. The publisher was Outback Press, an experimental venture by the young Morry Schwartz. His photograph is in the exhibition, positioned in isolation, cast as a small, wistful figure against a blank wall.
Subjects in A Book About Australian Women include the already famous Yvonne Goolagong, the soon-to-be-famous Anne Summers, and the feminist poet Kate Jennings. But the first image is of a child, Caroline Slade. The contact sheet, the record of the day when the photograph was taken, shows that she took several photographs of children happily playing. But the image selected by Jerrems is of a solemn little girl whose floral-patterned dress is almost, but not quite, a part of the patterned wallpaper background. As a result, the viewer focuses on the child’s face, as she contemplates the world.
In 1971, Jennie Boddington, Australia’s first curator of photography, bought Jerrems’ student work for the National Gallery of Victoria and later curated her first solo exhibition. Jerrems returned the compliment, recording the curator as she scrutinises her subject, the photographer. The result is a masterful work, as the viewer shares the intense concentration of the curator’s gaze.
A Book About Australian Women celebrated the creativity of a generation who were changing Australia at a breakneck speed. It included the singer Wendy Saddington, artist Joan Grounds, fashion designers Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee, as well as her co-author Virginia Fraser. The veteran actor Enid Lorimer is photographed under dappled light, gazing at a rising star, a vivacious Kate Fitzpatrick. The veteran artist Grace Cossington Smith is placed at an angle between windows. A second image shows her reflected in a mirror, rather like the way the artist painted her beloved garden. Jerrems emphasises the sun striking her hair and illuminating her body so that she looks almost like a spirit.
School’s out, 1975.Credit: Carol Jerrems
Light also forms a halo of hair in the portraits of the activist Bobbi Sykes and the Black Moratorium at Sydney University. These were the years when the newly formed Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council stimulated an outpouring of Indigenous creativity. One delightful work shows the potter Thancoupie (Gloria Fletcher) in conversation with Carole Johnson, the African American dancer who co-founded Bangarra Dance Theatre. There is a particularly beautiful photograph of the actor Bob Maza grouped with his family, helping his daughter hold a newborn sibling.
Jerrems was very much a part of the creative communities of both inner-city Melbourne and Sydney. They lived in shared houses in suburbs that were at the time regarded as slums, so rent was cheap. They were a rich mix of artists, actors, filmmakers and musicians, all of whom juggled freelance gig work on their way to fame – or oblivion. Jerrems became an active interpreter of her community’s lives and loves, including her own.
