Contact sheet (Linda Piper), 1974

Jerrems is best known for singularly striking photographs but she was deeply invested in the sequential nature of photography. She meticulously arranged her photographs, both in publications and exhibitions, to evoke specific moods and associations. ‘Please look at them, I have printed and arranged them, for you,’ she noted in a 1975 artist statement.

To plan these arrangements, Jerrems used small prints cut from her contact sheets. Contact sheets provide a record of every photograph from a roll of film and are produced by laying negatives directly on photographic paper before exposure and development in the darkroom. Jerrems often disrupted the indexical nature of the contact sheet by combining strips from different rolls, sometimes excising images, for the purpose of planning her hangs but also to introduce pauses and other narrative devices. Jerrems considered some of her sheets to be artworks themselves and exhibited them alongside her enlarged photographs.

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Gift of Mrs Joy Jerrems 1981.
© The Estate of Carol Jerrems