© National Portrait Gallery 2025
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Vale Street was shot in the backyard of the St Kilda sharehouse where Jerrems’ friend, photographer Robert Ashton lived. This contact sheet reveals the unhurried staging that played out over the course of the shoot, eventually resulting in the celebrated shot. As the trio pose and chat, robe and disrobe, there is both amiability and awkward nervousness. Then the energy stills and the critical moment, which holds such gravitas and tension, emerges.
There is only one additional frame taken after Vale Street before Jerrems went inside to photograph her friend, filmmaker and photographer Ian Macrae. This suggests that the shot felt right to her, and that she knew she had made something special.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Gift of Mrs Joy Jerrems 1981.
© The Estate of Carol Jerrems
Carol Jerrems: Portraits is a major exhibition of one of Australia’s most influential photographers. Jerrems’ intimate portraits of friends, lovers and artistic peers transcend the purely personal and have come to shape Australian visual culture.
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