Introducing Living Memory

- Hello and welcome everyone. Welcome to the National Portrait Gallery here in Canberra. My name is Robert. I'm going to be your host for today. Welcome to our onsite audience. It's lovely to see people in real-life at our program today, and welcome to everyone who is coming into us through Zoom and through Facebook. Welcome. I can see that people are streaming in from all over the country and even from overseas. Today is a special in conversation session, which is introducing Living Memory: The National Photographic Portrait Prize 2021. And just before we pass over to our curator today, I'd just like to give a few housekeeping tips for everyone, for those on Zoom, if you could keep your cameras and microphones muted, that would be fantastic. On Facebook and Zoom you can participate in the conversation by using the chat function and send us your comments and your questions. And if it's possible, we will be able to feed some of those through into the conversation. We are recording today's presentation and it may appear on our website and exist in the Facebook realm as well. If you would like to access the live captions on Zoom, you can go to the live transcript icon at the bottom of your screen and select show subtitle, just to note, these are auto-generated and the machine sometimes does a little garbled interpretation of the words, but it's pretty accurate. We have our session being interpreted through Auslan today, and Mandy will appear in the corner of your screen. I think that's probably all I need to say other than to acknowledge that today we are broadcasting here from the Liangis Theatre on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. And I'd like to pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging, and to acknowledge their continuing connection to the lands and the waters and the communities of the Canberra region. And I would like to extend that welcome to any First Nations people who are in attendance in our audience today. So without any further ado, I'm going to hand you over to Sandra Bruce, our Director of Collections and Exhibitions, so that we can have a closer look at some of the 79 finalists in this year's National Photographic Portrait Prize. Sandra.

- Thank you, Robert.

- Thank you so much for coming today, whether it's here at the National Portrait Gallery in-person, or whether you're coming to us from all over Australia, potentially all over the world. I am, as Robert said, one of the curatorial team members here at the Portrait Gallery, and one of our longstanding traditions is the National Photographic Portrait Prize. We are now in the 14th year of that prize, and it has certainly become a much loved tradition with not just our audiences, but also with photographers from around Australia. I think it's seen as an exciting opportunity to be a part of if the many thousands of photographers who enter their portraits, who take that brave leap to enter their portraits, make it into the finalist list and are exhibited. And we're very proud to be able to give Australian photographers that opportunity. With Living Memory it's an evolution, it's an expansion, it's I guess you could call it a special edition of what we've been doing for the 13 or 14 years now. And it is absolutely a result of the last 18 months or so that we've been living through. We have all experienced extraordinary circumstances. We've all been pressed in, into existing in a world that none of us have really experienced before. And so we acknowledge, and we fully expected that when we did the call-out for what we call the NPPP this time around that a lot of the entries that we would receive would reflect some of these situations. We wanted to commemorate that, we wanted to acknowledge that. And we really wanted to give all of us the chance to reflect on some of the commonalities in those lived experiences. To do that we decided to make it a bigger exhibition. Normally we would probably get around 40 to 45 finalists that would be invited to exhibit. This year as Robert mentioned, we have resulted in an exhibition that we've had to give over an entire pavilion of the gallery to, because we've got 79 finalists in the show. Now just a little caveat, that means that unless you want to be here until about eight o'clock tonight, I cannot talk about a whole of them. So I am just going to pull out a handful to really look at today that we can explore a little bit together, but that does not by any means necessarily mean that I'm privileging one over another. It's kind of like, I think probably asking a parent to choose their favourite children. You can't really do it. It's not very fair. And every single work that is in this exhibition is there because it deserves to be there. Now, when we invite photographers to enter, there are some conditions of entry. It probably won't surprise you to know that the primary thing is it has to be considered a portrait. Surprise, surprise! It must look like a recognisable human being or human beings for it to qualify. The other thing that we ask all of the photographers is that the photograph is taken within a specific time period. And it is always in the period immediately following the previous year for the NPPP. So these entries opened in the second half of October, 2019, and they closed at the end of March this year. So really we're looking at about a 16 month period in Living Memory. As I go through the slides, what I've done is we have some fantastic staff here at the gallery and Mark is our photographer. We have our own, and he's taken these beautiful installation shots of the exhibition. And I really wanted to do that for our online audience, because I do appreciate that we're trying to give you a sense of what that exhibition or what our exhibition looks like, because well we hope you can come to Canberra before the exhibition closes, we know that it may not be a possibility. Now, when we look at, as I mentioned, all of these, all of these lived experiences that we've had over this last little while, there was one that came before COVID and that was the bushfires. Now this is Elizabeth and Brian. Their property is in East Gippsland. And, you know, it's bushfires in Australia that we know what they are. Some seasons are worse, some seasons are better, but two summers ago was one of the worst, if not the worst season of bushfires we'd ever had. And quite a few photographers put themselves into those spaces. And there were many, many people who were affected by bushfires, who were generous enough to let those photographers into their lives and help us to understand exactly what they've lived through and what they're going through. And I think one of the things that I really love about Christopher's photograph, which he's called "Pride," is that what he has absolutely captured in this, is this beautiful couples determination to stick together, I guess, and support each other in spite of everything they're living through. And Elizabeth describes her husband as someone she can be very proud of despite what she calls his battle weariness. And I just think this really does speak to Australian's resilience and determination to keep moving forward and looking forward, regardless of dire straits. It wasn't just one isolated part of country Australia that was impacted by the fires. Now, this is Max. The thing that I find really interesting about Max, and his property is in Wangarabell. Oh, I just did that to Mandy. I am so sorry. Max. The thing that struck me with this portrait of Max by Rachel Mounsey is that his focus was very much on being really aware and really cognizant of nature coming back into the space that had been decimated by fire and observing the sounds of the bush coming back, the insects, the birds, some of the undershoots coming up from the undergrowth. And for him, as you can see in the quote, he says, "It's a lamentable game of survival, "but it's beautiful to watch." I was living in Melbourne that summer. And one of the situations that I think really struck us in Victoria was the fires that spread through East Gippsland and impacted right up to the coastline. And this is a shot of Young Finn steering his family away from the fires as part of the evacuation. His mother shot this on an iPhone, which is, I think really lovely. And it does speak to how photography has evolved as technology has become more and more accessible I think to so many people, almost everybody, if not everybody has an iPhone or I'm sorry, an Android. And while the quality might not be exactly the same as using an SLR camera if the timing's right and the shot's right, it's amazing what a photographer can achieve that really gets to the heart of a moment. But look at that red glow, it's not just in the sky, it takes over the whole scene. I can't even imagine what that New Year's Eve would have been like for people really. Okay. Every time we moved back into the gallery, I'm going to move into another theme, a little hint. Right, now post bushfire for the Canberrans in the room, we then had to deal with a hail storm. I don't know that there are any portraits of dented roofs of cars in this exhibition, but post our hail storm here in Canberra, we then all had to face what everybody else had to face. And that was the unleashing of a pandemic on the world. The photographic responses to this have been absolutely extraordinary. And we have what I think is a quintessential kind of summary of how we're continuing to cope as we're getting used to it. Laura Reid shot this photograph of a beautiful beach scene and bench that you can't sit on because COVID won't let us sit on things anymore. Isn't that extraordinary putting caution tape around a piece of public furniture? But you know, we're used to it now. This is, this is our current normal, I suppose, and this portrait it's absolutely a view of a young, healthy looking woman. But it's also a view of, I think of the Australian experience. We're still trying to find ways to live our lives in spite of everything that we're going through. I don't think that's her bike. It looks a little bit too small. From memory Laura, the photographer. Oh yes. Here's a quote from Laura. "I imagine she is looking out, "looking for a brighter future, "but grey clouds hang on the horizon." This is my living memory of this year. Oh, okay. Now what do artists get up to during lockdown? Particularly artists who want to capture people, capture other people, create portraits. They could do a curated Zoom project. So Suzanne Phoenix created this fantastic series where she engaged with communities over Zoom and took portraits of them via Zoom. If that isn't a sign of the times, I really don't know what is. I think this, there's something quiet, almost village-esque Bohemian about how do you spend your time when you can't leave your house, do you know what? Let's get flocked up, sit in a bathtub, have a couple of drinks and chat. And this speaks, I think, to people just choosing to live their life regardless of the circumstance they going through yet again, and still find ways to connect regardless. So the Lazy Susan is the name of the person in the bathtub. And Lazy Susan said that they would probably describe this as one of the hardest days that they experienced in lockdown, but they were always there for each other with a smile just like every other day. And in terms of Lazy Susan's art being drag, you may have noticed, she does say that drag is an art that is about survival. So there's that as well. Oh, the artist, the photographer is on Zoom. Hi, Suzanne. Lovely to see you and thank you so much. This is certainly getting a lot of smiles in the exhibition. It's a great piece to have. So thank you for entering. Now. Oh yes, here we go. And, COVID has been interesting. It's interesting to see that some of the portraits that we have, that have been created as a result of lockdown, haven't necessarily been one that you would necessarily associate with the lockdown experience. And to be fair, the previous portrait by Suzanne could be considered in much the same way. If it didn't have that underlying theme of lockdown experience, Lazy Susan could have been in that bathtub on any day of the week. So this one called "Sunbath Under the Lockdown" by Franky Tsang to me that looks like a glorious summer or spring afternoon, enjoying the sunshine. The composition of this one I really like. For me, it's a very domestic, very, very domestic scene. Water, no water? Okay. Yeah, it's a very domestic scene. There's no two ways about it, but it's divided into the classic thirds of a really beautiful composition. And it's got a quietness about it that I think reminds us all of the comforts that you can get of living at home and having a quiet life. I think from memory Franky said they were in lockdown on the Northern Beaches. Another view, I'm not going to zoom in on either of these two works. I did just want to, I like the choice our exhibition designer made around a lot of the arrangements of which works are placed beside which as you move through the exhibition. These two, they speak to the polarities, I guess, of the COVID life, where you find ways to entertain yourself, whether it's going out for a swim with your best friend or engaging with the world through your laptop. And really, I think we should probably, well, okay. I, I'll speak for myself. I won't preach to others. I should do more of the swimming with the mate and probably less of the laptop action. But. This one, we talked about this work a little bit in last week's panel, but we didn't get the opportunity to bring it up on screen. This is "In a World of Her Own" by Mark Mortensen. I'm a huge fan of this, I'm inveterate reader. And I love the idea of kids reading books with pages, paper, getting to crease the corner to keep their space, maybe using a bookmark, hopefully not turning it upside down and creasing the spine. Now what would her classics be? It could be Nancy Drew. Now that'd be one of my classics. Could be, oh, it'd be nice if it was Jane Austen, maybe J. R. R. Tolkien. I love the idea that this young girl could be exploring a whole world just through the pages of a book, which is something that is probably not what we necessarily expect kids to do today. The sunlight streaming through creating those beautiful shadows around her. And she's relying on that beam of sunlight to read her book. I just think it's an exquisite portrait. It's dark, it's dark. It's a little tough to see. Michael Pham was going for a walk and he saw this couple having their dinner date in their car, and he started miming to ask if he could take the photograph. So he sort of waved at them and then pointed at his camera and then asked if he could take a photo, and I think they did a thumbs up and then went back to eating and he took the photo and he kept going. But this is interesting. You wanna go and get takeaway. You want to go out for dinner. You're not allowed to sit in because all of the restaurants are closed. You don't wanna go back to your lounge room, so you have dinner in your car. It kind of reminds me of drive-in theatres a little bit. I don't know if, are there any drive-in theatres left? I don't know. I think there's one down in Dromana on the Mornington Peninsula. That's a bit of a drive-through, isn't it? Okay. Now we saw with Suzanne Phoenix's work, that some artists are reaching out and creating new work during this time and they're using COVID, using the pandemic as an impetus to create new work. Benny Capp is a photographer who works in the film and TV industry. And interestingly enough, this subject Marty was in one of Benny's portraits that made it into last year's NPPP. So this duo have been fortunate enough to be in two years in a row. So what Benny did was he reached out to his friends within the industry, set designers into fashionistas and invited them to use props and furniture to create their own favourite environment that they felt would reflect a space that they would want to be in. And so this is Marty's constructed, stylized living room that he's placed himself in. I like it because it's essentially a three-dimensional self portrait by Marty captured as a portrait by Benny. And I think it's a really lovely project that Benny created. And I think the name of the series is called Unseen Sets. It is quite reminiscent of a particular style of cinematography too, with those really graphic colours and strong, almost stylized forms with the pot plants and the types of things that are hanging on the wall. And I feel like it's a little bit tongue in cheek as well. And I think I liked that about it too. Okay. Now with the entries this year, and I should mention, the judges had over 3000 entries to go through. It was, there's only been one other year that we've had more than 3000 entries. So our photographers of Australia was so keen to really put their hand up and talk about and offer what their experiences have been this year. It hasn't all been COVID, it hasn't all been bushfire. There have been, and there were some beautifully successful works that really speak to what that photographers particular plans were for their work. And they were going to go on with that. And they weren't necessarily looking to refer to pandemic as such or lockdown or the bushfires. This work, the more I look at it, the more I like it, it seems quite unusual, but it is, it's a wedding photograph that isn't a wedding photograph. John's series of works are about, as he says, in that quote, "Capturing guests and couples in a style "that's not associated with wedding photography." So they almost feel a little bit, and I hope I'm not going to insult John or the lovely couple because they look beautiful, but they kind of look like wedding toppers the way they're kind of just there. But that sort of straight up and down, very kind of constructed posture, looking straight at camera, they're not touching, they're standing side by side and they've got their beautiful wedding costumes on. They're standing in an Australian bush setting. For me, it's almost reminding us that those are two very individual people. They've chosen to live their lives together. And I'm sure they're extraordinarily happy about it as you should be on your wedding day. But for me, this is about them as individuals coming together. And it's a curious photograph. It's almost surreal in that it does create this sense of them stepping out of the excitement of their wedding and just being themselves again. Oh, sometimes we get asked, is it truly a portrait, i you can't see their face? This one "A Girl and Her Boy," it's beautifully dramatic, very romantic with all of those dark heavy clouds. It's got a bit of a Victorian kind of Gothic romance thing going on. But we know that Larissa, one of the big things about Larissa as a person is she loves her horse. And we get that regardless of whether we can see her face. We know just by looking at her body language, as she's leading her horse down the lane, that that's an intrinsic part of who Larissa is and so, while the landscape is a very important and quite overwhelming aspect of this portrait, I think we do still very much get a sense of this young woman, and who she chooses to be. Obi cute name for a horse. Don't know if it's got anything to do with the "Star Wars" series. But I like to think that those things transcend generations. Going back to what I said earlier about the time period that photographers were allowed to submit their works from. Photographs taken on or after the 23rd of October, 2019. So this photograph was taken two days later, and it is such an important time in Australian living history around First Nations people reclaiming true custodianship over very important sites for them. When that happened, there was a lot going on in the press. There were many, many different voices with many, many different opinions about the decision to close Uluru to climbing tourists. And to be perfectly honest, I think we all thought that that was going to be a marked moment and it will stand the test of time. It will be a marked moment in our history, but just think that that only happened, you know, 18 months ago. And that experience has been completely subsumed in our memories because of everything that's come after it. It's a beautiful portrait, I think. There's something quite classic about it. But it shows, I think it does do that beautiful job of showing Ruby James and her fellow women in their own country and the light that's filtering across from the left of the frame and creating that glow almost that halo effect really does beautifully celebrate, commemorate that moment. The artist Adele Wilkes was invited to capture this portrait, which is also, I think another lovely thing to point out. I wanted to touch on the outcome of the prize. Now it is the National Photographic Portrait Prize, that means that we do give a few awards every year. And the two biggest awards are the highly commended and the winning work. Our judges this year were Karen Quinlan, the director of the Portrait Gallery, Nick Mitzevich the director of the National Gallery of Australia, and the esteemed Australian photographer, Bill Henson. When it came down to it, it's a sure bet that the highly commended and the winning work are the two top works. This one highly commended this year it's by Julian kingma and it's "Tom at the Drain." Tom is Julian son, and he has ADHD. And one of the big challenges for their little family was keeping Tom occupied and happy, and giving him opportunities to not get too stressed, not feel too hemmed in. And so this is one of their outings where they got out and Tom was able to go for a bit of a swim. It's an interesting composition. It's quite, that's all right. It's an interesting composition. It is quite moody. Having the horizon line so far up at the top of the composition really does add to that sense of sort of dark anticipation, if you like. But I don't think that that necessarily means it's a sinister work. I think it just means that there is a lot of drama in it, which is almost balanced out by the fact that there's, you do feel like it's a moment of rest for Tom. He is pausing. He's not splashing around. There's a little ripple in the background. Interestingly enough, I don't know if Julian knows this, but two of the three judges thought that the form that Tom's leaning on, the form that Tom's leaning on is a rock, but it's actually a drain. And so, I like the idea that these things were still able to happen, that kids were still able to be kids and go for a bit of a dip, get a bit grotty, do what they wanted, and that all of that was recognised. And maybe starting to free up some kids to maybe pull them away from their screens a little bit. Now the winning work, I think most people would have seen this already. This is Joel Pratley, is the photographer, Sydney based photographer. The work is called "Drought Story." Now here's an example of not being able to see the subject's face. This is a farmer his name is David. His is farm out near Forbes. And this was a dust storm that came through his property last year. It truly is a monumental scene, isn't it? Primary industry farming, such a huge part of Australia. It's really critical to our way of life even if we never get to experience it ourselves, it is something that I think that we can all connect with as Australians and recognise as part of, part of, I guess, what it is or an aspect of what it is to be Australian. If you look really closely, you can see the horizon line, but it's almost completely subsumed by the dust storm. And I think this is one of the shortest artists' statements that I've seen. And that's it right there. Sometimes you think, "Why am I here?" I've got to say, just as with some of the struggles with the pandemic, with frontline health workers, with people impacted by bushfires, whether it was first responders or people who were trying to save their homes, who lost their homes, lost loved ones. Just as with them, I think that there are circumstances like the one that David's had to live with with drought on his property. One can only imagine what it would be like to live in that unless you've lived through it yourself. But this does absolutely, I think, give us a sense of David as a man, as a farmer and as someone who is dedicated to, to just getting on with, again, pushing through in spite of what he's having to deal with. I think that might be my last slide. Oh, look, it's my last slide. Let's go back to it. I wonder if we have any questions, if we've got time for them. Robert?

- Yeah. Sandra, we, well Jill's has been posing some questions in there, in the chat and getting a bit of conversation going. There's been general observations about the construction of the portraits as you've gone through, but we do know that we've got a number of the finalists here with us today. We've got Jennifer Blau, Suzanne Phoenix, who we mentioned before, Laura Reid, Marzena Wasikowska. I love that one of Marzena's with the child doing the somersault on the beach, such beautiful colours. And Tracy Ponich, the Elena in the bookshop.

- Oh yes.

- Yep, Suzanne. There's been a bit of a discussion about whether a portrait is a portrait if you can't see the face-

- Yes.

- As exemplified by the winner here. But I think just to paraphrase that there's a general feeling that it is, and that people don't need to see the face. And in fact that can tell its own story. Jennifer Blau actually said her image purposefully hid the subject's face. And actually Marzena noted that she'd counted nine backs of people in this show. So she must've scrolled through all 79 finalists counting backs. And that must be some sort of a record for a portrait show.

- Yes, I think, and then we had the renowned press photographer Mike Bowers here last week and he noted a decent number of dogs as well. So possibly next time I have a chat, it'll have to be those two themes backs of heads and pets, I think, oh, there's some cats in there too.

- [Robert] Aha!

- Yes.

- Always good to have a cat in a portrait. We do have some other questions from Amy she'd like to know more about how the judges aesthetic tastes influenced the decision and how you keep the price diverse.

- Yes, it's an interesting proposition. Isn't it? What goes on in the minds of the judges? We have different judges every year and we always have three judges. One represents the gallery is always a member of the curatorial staff. And then we will have two externals people that come in, ideally, a photographer and then often the third person would be another curator from another institution or another part of our gallery and museum sector. And so this year with Karen, Nick, and Bill, we did wonder particularly, I think with Bill, how much his own aesthetic style would maybe influence the works that he was particularly drawn to. And I think there is a case for a little bit of that. For those of you who have seen the exhibition or had a look at some of, or had a look at the finalist works, you probably will see that there are some works that do resonate probably with Henson's own practise to a certain extent or have sort of links to them, if you like. But the important thing about having more than one judge is that it does by its very nature diversify what we end up with as a result, because every individual person comes to art from a different perspective. You would know that yourself, you're not necessarily going to like the same thing or appreciate is probably a better word. You're not necessarily going to appreciate the same thing as the person next to you. And so when we have two directors of galleries who have been in the industry for a long time and have a very, very good understanding of contemporary art practise and then have a contemporary photographer at the peak of his career, I think that we find that we end up with a spread of work that you can hope and ideally trust. It starts from a position of very strong, rigorous, robust works in and of themselves as artworks first, I would tend to think. Artworks first and then I guess biography second or even story second. When your being asked to consider more than 3000 images, it has to be image first that you look at it as a judge because you don't necessarily have the time to even necessarily read the artist's statements, let alone look at the name of the photographer, the artist. You've got so much to go through. It's got to be those compositions, the visuals that grab you that make you want to learn more about it, find out what's going on, potentially know who took the photograph in the first place.

- Sandra we've probably only got time for one more question and then we'll need to wrap up. But there was a question from our audience here in the Liangis Theatre, just noting that some of the previous winners recently have been, the portraits have been part of commercial shoots and some of the portraits in the finalist selection had maybe stylists or artistic directors or that sort of thing. And how much does that impact on their ability to get through to the final stages of the prize.

- So to potentially winning the ultimate $50,000 worth of-

- As compared to the person walking down the street taking a photo of two people eating takeaway in a car.

- Yes. Well, I think, I think when it comes down to it, it is often pretty clear what is, what could be considered documentary portrait, say for example, Young Finn steering the dinghy away from Mallacoota that is absolutely a documentary portrait versus something like, Benny Capp's photograph of Marty in his constructed living room. I mean, it's very clear that one has high production values and one is of the moment. But when it comes down to it, this year's winning work shows that regardless of whether something is shot on a set or not, sometimes it's just being in the right place at the right time. Joel was working when he was out at Forbes, but he did not stage this photograph. David was walking away from him and he took the shot. And so I think-

- [Robert] It did sound yeah, quite in the moment.

- Yes.

- When he was talking.

- Yes, and I think the other thing to remember, just like any other medium, whether someone's a painter, a sculptor, a photographer, different talents as an artist, different creative skills show themselves in different ways. And so some photographers are at their best when they can put a lot of work into constructing what it is they want to capture, and some photographers work better when they use a more instinctual approach to their craft. And that is the same as I say with other mediums, it's kind of, I guess like comparing Leonardo da Vinci with Jackson Pollock, you know what I mean? There are so many different ways for an artist to use their medium and the thing that I love the most about our National Photographic Portrait Prize is, we get the gamut these days. If we didn't and if we weren't willing to accept it, we wouldn't have a Zoom portrait and we would not have a mobile phone portrait. And I'm very happy that they're now part of this dialogue and this story.

- There's a huge amount of diversity on those walls.

- Yes.

- I think that's all we've got time for. Thank you so much, Sandra, for all of those insights, I feel, I know a lot more about the portraits in Living Memory: The National Photographic Portrait Prize 2021. And actually I suspect many of us will go and do a bit more research, because all of those finalists in the exhibition are able to be accessed on our website, portrait.gov.au with a bit of extra information about the portrait. So do go and check that out. Keep in touch with us through our social media @portraitau or on our Facebook. It was great to hear all of your chat messages and observations today from our Zoom audience and from our Facebook audience. We will actually be going back and reading those and just in a bit more detail. Look, I know everyone around Australia is in different stages at the moment of lockdown or stay at home orders and those sorts of things, we send our best wishes and our thoughts out to everyone. We hope our virtual programs coming out from the National Portrait Gallery give you some sort of outlet in these interesting times. If you're close do come down, if you're in the Canberra region, come down and see Living Memory, otherwise access it through our website. I did just wanna do a shout out that we do have the People's Choice Awards, so if you go to the website, you can vote for your choice. And that may be quite different from the judge's choice. And the photographer who receives the most votes will receive $5,000 from the David Roche Foundation. So you've got until October 17 to vote for the People's Choice Award and you can reward the lucky photographer. Thanks very much for joining us. Thank you to everyone here in the theatre and stay safe Australia. We'll see you in our next virtual program, or if possible, if you can get down here to the National Portrait Gallery. Goodbye.