© National Portrait Gallery 2024
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196
National Photographic Portrait Prize 2007 Finalist
The sitter for this portrait is Alyssa Braithwaite, a journalist at the Australian Associated Press, and a friend and colleague of my wife's. I first met her a couple of years ago and was instantly struck by her. She does not conform to the traditional notion of beauty, yet she is one of the most beautiful women I know. She has the most beautiful and engaging eyes, and an almost sad, melancholy expression. She has that certain naivety of an uncorrupted soul. With this image, I wanted to capture that beauty and innocence and stripped the shot down to the bare minimum. We scrubbed away any semblance of makeup and framed the shot to include no reference to clothing. We also pulled back her hair to further simplify the image.
Photography is the most pervasive and popular medium for portraiture and makes a natural fit with the Gallery, being a natural extension of the Gallery's longstanding commitment to photography as a contemporary portrait medium.
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