© National Portrait Gallery 2025
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In this shot, Sandy winds his arm, about to skip a stone or bowl an invisible cricket ball, or maybe even dance. The image is balletic, the body more a play of form than a straight portrait. In the arc of Sandy’s bowed back, we find an echo of the languid slope of the boy who leans against a wall in Jerrems’ early work Boy watching a man play billiards but also of Jon Bourke’s concave torso as he leans out of the shadows in Vale Street. Jerrems was always attentive to the emotive power of gesture, and was repeatedly drawn to bodies that buckle.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Gift of the Philip Morris Arts Grant 1982.
© 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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