© National Portrait Gallery 2024
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Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196
National Photographic Portrait Prize 2010 Finalist
Don Ritchie, eighty-two, is a former life insurance salesman who in forty-five years has rescued 160 people from jumping to their death at Sydney's notorious 'Gap', opposite his home at Watson's Bay. Some have changed their minds and followed him home to breakfast but others have struggled with him and gone through with their intention. He still scans the horizon for would-be jumpers in between drinking tea and reading in the hope that he might prevent someone else from taking their life. An anonymous note left in his letterbox described him as 'an angel walking among us'.
The National Photographic Portrait Prize is an annual event intended to promote the very best in contemporary photographic portraiture by both professional and aspiring Australian photographers.
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