Narelle Autio

Narelle Autio (b. 1969) went to art school in South Australia intending to become a painter, but ‘somehow ended up’ with a camera. Graduating in 1990, she worked for the Adelaide Advertiser and for UK newspapers before returning to Australia in 1998, where she worked for the Sydney Morning Herald until 2003. She is the first Australian to have won the venerable international Leica Oskar Barnack Award for photography. She has won two World Press awards, an American Picture of the Year award and two Walkley awards, as well as twice being a finalist in the Basil Sellers Art Prize. She also has won the Fleurieu Art Prize, the Bowness Photography Prize and the Olive Cotton Award. Now Adelaide-based, Autio creates poetic images that challenge the limits of photo- documentation, her subjects often ‘unknown’ people depicted in extraordinary surrounds. She is particularly renowned for lush, glowing photographs of figures in water. She frequently collaborates with her life partner, photographer Trent Parke. Her photographs are in major public collections across Australia and in many private and corporate collections.