15 minutes of frame, National Portrait Gallery

Delve into the lives, loves and labour of the world’s most prominent portrait galleries in this international conversation series. From curatorial decisions to art handling, exhibition design to major events, favourite portraits to the creative copy they command – this is your chance to go behind the scenes for insights into global gallery goings-on. The second event in this 15 Minutes of Frame international series will focus on the power that photographic portraiture has to change and enhance collections. It features Magdalene Keaney, Senior Curator, Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, London and Louise Pearson Curator (Photography) at the National Galleries of Scotland, in conversation with our very own Penny Grist, Curator Exhibitions.

Together they delve into the nature of the medium, the diversity, and identity within photographic portraiture and its role in the history, opportunities, and legacies of these three portrait galleries.

Magdalene Keaney is Senior Curator, Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, London, where she is responsible for the care and development of one of the world’s largest and most significant collections of photographs. Her work encompasses acquisitions, commissions, displays and exhibition development. Keaney has written widely for exhibition catalogues, books and magazines including 100 Fashion Icons (National Portrait Gallery, London, 2019) and contributions to publications including Cindy Sherman (National Portrait Gallery, London, 2019), Know My Name (National Gallery of Australia, 2020), and A World History of Women Photographers (Editions Textuel, 2020). She is currently working on a major representation of the NPG’s historic collection for the Inspiring People redevelopment project. Previously holding curatorial roles at the Australian National Portrait Gallery and the Australian War Memorial, her expertise spans nineteenth century to contemporary and she is particularly interested in women’s practice.

Louise Pearson is Curator (Photography) at the National Galleries of Scotland, which holds Scotland’s national collection of photography. She has recently been awarded a grant from the Art Fund to use Scotland’s upcoming census as the catalyst to acquire and commission portraits which better reflect the diversity of Scotland’s population. Louise previously worked for Royal Collection Trust, where she worked on a major research project on Roger Fenton’s photographs of the Crimean War.

Penelope Grist holds a Master of Liberal Arts (Museums and Collections) from the Australian National University and honours degrees in Law and Art History (University of Sydney). She has worked at the National Library of Australia and National Museum of Australia and is currently Curator - Exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery of Australia. She has twice been a judge and curator of the National Photographic Portrait Prize and has curated exhibitions including PROMO: Portraits from primetime (2014), In the Flesh (summer 2014-15) and Bare: Degrees of Undress (2015-16) and Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits (summer 2017-20). She is Chair of the PhotoAccess Board and an elected member of the Australian Museums and Galleries Association National Council.

Video transcript

- Hello everyone, welcome to 15 Minutes of Frame, a cross-continental conversation, bringing together the National Portrait Galleries from around the world. In this series, we take you behind the scenes, we get you to meet some of our amazing staff, and we have a little bit of a delve into the issues and the inspiration and the things that make them tick. And what a conversation we have planned for you today. portrait photography, something that's just become actually integral to our lives. So it's very little surprise that portrait photography is integral to our National Portrait Gallery's collections as well. Our panel today will actually take you on a journey. They'll take you through to see the, to explore the transformative powers of portrait photography, not only for our cultural institutions, but for our audiences. And we'll also have a little look at the opportunities for portrait photography in embracing the diverse communities that surround our institutions. My name's Gill Raymond, I'll be the host of our conversation today. I work here at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, Australia. I'm broadcasting to you today from the lands, the beautiful lands of the Ngunnawal and the Ngambri peoples. And I'd like to pay my respect to their elders past, present and emerging. And I'd also like to extend that same respect, to the traditional custodians of any of the lands on which you're coming to us from today. As with all our online programs here at the National Portrait Gallery, we like to keep it a little bit casual, but we also love to keep them interactive. So throughout the course of the conversation, if you have any burning questions that come up that you'd love to ask our panel, please enter them into the chat function of the webinar, which you should be able to access along the bottom of your devices. Talk to me in there and I'll do my very best to pass as many of those onto our panel as we can. You might also like to set your settings to gallery view. We have three panelists today Zooming in from all over the world. So if you'd like to see all three on your screen at once, if you set it to gallery view, or if you swipe across on your mobile device, you'll then be able to see all three of us, all three panelists talking at the same time. If you'd also like to let us know in the chat where you're coming from, we love to welcome all our national and international guests to our programs. So feel free to test out that chat now and let us know where in the world you might be. So to get onto our wonderful discussion this evening, joining us from lockdown and mid-winter, what a double whammy in London, is a dear friend of ours, Magda Keaney, who is the Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Magda actually started her journey with National Portrait Galleries here at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. So it is just so lovely to reconnect with her for this program. And beaming into us a little further North from Magda in snowy and rainy Edinburgh, is Louise Pearson who is the Curator of Photography at the National Galleries of Scotland, which includes their National Portrait Gallery. We had an introductory chat to plan this conversation a week ago, and Louise dropped the fact that a little while ago, the National Portrait Gallery in Scotland just happened to acquire 15,000 photographs in one go from a particular collector. So being one of the youngest portrait galleries on the block here in Canberra Australia, that sort of blew our a little minds a little bit. We have a very small collection, but a very exciting collection. And one that's growing quite rapidly. 15,000 in one go was just a little bit too much for me to imagine however. So I hope that we hear some of that during the course of the conversation. And finally, we have our very own Penny Grist, whose non portrait related activities include, orthonological adventures. She actually enjoys stalking birds. So there's a fun fact for you. Completely non portrait related, of course, but she's the Curator of Exhibitions here at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. So welcome to our panelists. Welcome to you all. I hope you enjoy the conversation tonight and I'd like to throw over now to Penny to kick off the chat.

- Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Gill, and thank you to the team here, Robert and Hector behind the slides and the tech. And welcome Magda and Louise. It's so great to be talking with you. Let's just get straight into it. I mean, we have three different, really different portrait galleries with really different institutional histories and remits and context. So to kick us off, to follow on from what Gill was saying, the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra is the youngest of the three of us. We've only been around since 1998. It's like Magda will remember very clearly, as she was part of the, one of the originals of the teams working here. And we've only had half our buildings since 2008. So we've got to know, let's just have our first slide, and look at the building of the National Portrait Gallery here just to give Magda a blast from the past. There we go. That's us under construction. So what I would like to ask both Magda and Louise, to start the conversation is what is the place of photographic portraiture in your institutional context? So give us a little bit of a overview of your institution and where photographic portraiture fits. And to begin that, we'll go to the next slide as well Robert. So for us here in Canberra, we were very much, our remit was to become a contemporary portrait gallery with contemporary developments. And so this is a portrait of Simone Young, the conductor by Bill Henson. So one of our foremost Australian contemporary artists and it was very much commissioned to make a statement about our emphasis on portrait photography as being one of the signals that we were a contemporary collection. So tell us about the context that you're both coming from. Why don't we start with, let's start with Louise.

- So can I share the picture of the portrait gallery in Edinburgh? I just wanted to give you a bit of context about the portrait gallery in Edinburgh. It's actually the world's first purpose-built portrait gallery now open to the public in 1889. So it's got quite a few years on the portrait gallery in Canberra, and quite a lot of the building actually incorporates portraits into the design. So on the front of the building and on the freeze on our amazing, great hall. So we, you know, we go back to sort of the great and the good of Scotland back to the 15th century. So there's a pretty broad collection, but as I mentioned when we had our sort of introduction chat remit with photography, isn't just portraiture. Can I share the next slide please? So I just wanted to kinda put it out there that we collect portraiture and we very much contribute to the portrait collections that we're building up at the National Galleries of Scotland but we also have photographs of all subjects around the world and particularly its context in Scotland including these which show some of the earliest photographs ever made building the Scott Monument in Edinburgh. The next slide, please just to give you a bit of a taste of the kind of people that we have in the portrait gallery and to hopefully recognize this, Sir tennis playing duo Andy Murray. So traditionally the context has been to collect people. Who've made a significant contribution to life in Scotland but like the portrait galleries around the world we're starting to widen our remit considerably and look at people who live and work in Scotland in a more broad, normal context. So that's kind of where we're up to at the moment. Magda could you give a brief intro to the-

- So the National Portrait Gallery in London was founded by an Act of Parliament in 1856. And then the first building which isn't the building that we're in now opened in 1859. And Robert, if it's okay to pop that first slide up just the text. So even though the National Portrait Gallery, in London was born almost at the same time as photography well photography in fact was born before the National Portrait Gallery. The collections really didn't include photography, until the 20th century, if you can believe that. And so essentially when the portrait gallery was founded, and for really most the rest of the 19th century it was painted portraits that were required. And you can see here, the slide, in fact there were various kind of rules that were laid down about you know, what kind of portraits should be acquired. And there was this 10 year rule that no portrait of any living person of any person still living or deceased less than 10 years shall be admitted, you know to the National Portrait Gallery, unless of course you were the Queen or at that time or the Queen's consort. And so if we just go to the next slide, even though at the time that the National Portrait Gallery was founded you had incredible photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron, and you can see here a slide of her favorite suitor and niece, Julia Jackson, the mother of Virginia Wolf, and then two of her, you know, great men so to speak both taken in 1867 you know, when the portrait gallery was founded but these works, you know, some of the most important works in the collection weren't acquired until the 20th century. You know, "The portrait of Carlyle" was an early acquisition. Carlyle was one of the early trustees of the portrait gallery. So even though we, the portrait gallery in London was kind of born at the time of photography obviously the status of photography in the 19th century. And indeed for quite a bit of the 20th century has been contested. You know, what is photography? You know is photography a portrait photograph, can it convey more than a likeness? And there was this real idea at the portrait gallery in London that the paintings, you know to be shown to the public and to have this inspirational capacity should be more than just a likeness. And I guess some of the conversations around what photography was at that time, you know sort of came into play. And but you know, once we got to the 20th century things started to speed up a bit. And certainly I think the next sort of defining point you know, there were some acquisitions made in the early 20th century, but really by the sixties or late sixties and the appointment of Sir Roy Strong National Portrait Gallery Director photography really started to come into its own for us. And that was the first exhibition that, you know obviously exhibitions of photography at portrait galleries around the world are, you know you couldn't imagine our programs without them. They're so vital and they're so popular. You know, our first exhibition of portrait photography wasn't until 1968 which was an exhibition of Cecil Beaton's photography, a fashion photographer too. And Sir Roy strong, you know, also that was the time, in the late sixties that the 10 year rule was abandoned. And although there had also been collecting there's a slide there Robert, which shows it's the National Photographic Register the NPR. So really in 19, there it is yeah, about 1917. I'm gonna say there was this program instigated called the national photographic register a record sorry. And as you can see, it's kinda a lot of older white guys and it was a program instigated with the National Portrait Gallery that ran really until the seventies and thousands of portraits in this vein were made sort of studio portraits beginning with Walter Stoneman that you see there on the left in 1942, then taken over by Walter Bird and continuing through to the seventies. But then, you know, after that, a photographic curator was appointed and the first photographic curator was a guy called Colin Ford. And then just sort of skipping to today, there is a slide which is there's Kate Moss taken by Corrine Day. We have, yeah, there we go. So you can see here three more contemporary commissions so you can see how the commissioning program has been developed. And I really wanted to highlight portraits of women taken by fabulous women taken by fabulous women. And these are some of my much love portraits and you can see Bonnie Greer there by Maud Sulter, In fact, a Scottish photographer a commission that more undertook around writers Kate Moss commissioned by Corrine Day, and Rebecca Adlington the Olympic gold medal swimmer by Patina Boswell a fantastic British contemporary photographer. So yeah that's a bit of an overview.

- That's just fascinating Magda what a sweep of history that takes us through in terms of your collecting. It's interesting, you'll bring Louise back in here too in terms of the contemporary collecting because with an institution that, you know that idea that portraits were embedded in the very fabric of your 19th century building and also this idea that your portraiture collection, your photography collection held within your remit, is much broader than just portraiture and includes all of that photographic context as well. So do you wanna talk a little bit about your contemporary collecting in that historical context of your institution?

- Yes so it's a slight sort of quirk of history that the photograph collection held by National Galleries of Scotland actually based at the Portrait Gallery and it all built from the first major acquisition of photographs, which was Helen Adamson's remarkable collection of photographs mainly taken in Edinburgh and around that part of Scotland and though not exclusively it's predominantly portraits which is how it kind of ended up in their portrait gallery. And it kind of has grown from there, but you know with this wider context developing around it. So now our contribution to portraiture is very much how it would be another portrait galleries, you know we can make yeah we can see, you know it's an equal medium with the other and always trying to promote photography. 'Cause as Magna says it's always really popular. People really love it. And we can't imagine the portrait gallery without it. And what we're trying to do at the moment is we have a dedicated photography gallery but we're also trying to integrate portrait photography more into the gallery's collection overall. So we have a kind of rotating display called the modern portrait which runs kind of over the 19th and 20th century. So we're trying to intersperse photographs and particularly new acquisitions and new commission into that. So yeah, it's an exciting time in photography.

- Its a very exciting time and something that I noticed looking, you know looking back through our collections, there's been the in a way portrait photography has led the way for us in expanding our notion of portraiture and something that I sort of I really love about in in our collection is I suppose those quirks in it. So Robert, can you just bring up the David Moore slide? So this is we held an exhibition here in 2000, sort of the major Australian photographer, David Moore. And you can see both of these works reenact collection, but they're very much not what you would consider a traditional portrait. And I think that's been a really powerful aspect of the role of photography within a collection of this kind that it sort of expands that notion of portraiture into sense of identity. Is that something that you've noticed, in your collections? Magda do you wanna comment on that first? Yeah look, I think, you know, I raised the point that the sort of contested status of photography really for the National Portrait Gallery in London was a kind of very relevant issue. So what is photography? and also what is identity and what is a portrait? And so these are questions that really still underpin a lot of our thinking and research I would say across the three institutions and that those ideas have evolved, you know with critical thinking and artistic practice. You know, obviously in the 20th century, you know the first decades of the 20th century and the idea of abstraction and identity became so much more important within artistic practices. And so that those approaches to photography, and photographic portrait can be seen throughout the collection as they start happening. Because I think one of the really incredible things about getting to work with the collection in London is it such a important portrait collection but it's also a really important photographic collection. So that in many ways, the history of photography is kind of mapped out through our collection over time. There's just a slide there Robert, which is a group of, I think six images. There's Lucia Moholy there is Aline Milla image. So just to give you a sense of how that might look kind of this idea of a photographic history plotted through the history of the National Portrait Gallery collection. So just thinking about 20th century approaches, to photography and significant 20th century practitioners and again I'm sticking with women, you know, you can see here you know, Lucia Moholy, Lee Miller, Dorothy Welding, Lisette Model, Berenice Abbott and Eve Arnold, you know all such incredibly important photographic practitioners of the 20th century. Also sort of tracking different approaches to portraiture. And Lucia Moholy for instance obviously such an important modernist photographer you know, and the way she has you know yeah. If you consider the idea of identity in that portrait of Marco Asquith a very well photographed society figure, photographed by many, many photographers during the 20th century, but you know her face is kind of in shadow. You know, it's a profile it's very, very reduced, you know it's very simple in the form there isn't a lot of detail around yet it's a very beautiful and you know insightful kind of portrait or then looking just to the next image of the surrealist painter Eileen Agar, And this is again, one of my much loved images in the collection by Lee Miller, fabulously Miller you know, you can see Lee there it's like the shadow of her. So it was kind of a self portrait of Lee there too. But again, if you consider the idea of portraiture and likeness and identity, it's a silhouette. So it's very playful. So yeah I mean, you could do that from the, start of the history of photography right up to the contemporary period, I think, and you know that image of Kate Moss taken by Corinne Day. You know, if you think of I think what's one of the things I love about that, you know, is the idea that a portrait is meant to be a kind of definitive likeness of someone, you know but does one portrait or one photograph ever encapsulate, you know, someone even in that moment. And I loved the way that Corinne sort of played with the idea of multiplicity through presenting the gridded image of Kate Moss. So yeah that's some thoughts,

- And we've got a question actually following on from this from Michael, do our institutions define what we mean by portraiture? We do, and that's changing a little bit at the, at least for us at the portrait gallery in within our prize definitions for our National Photographic Portrait prize. We've actually this year expanded the notion of portraiture to include expressions of identity that may not be a picture of a person to so that diverse cultural representations or non Western or First Nations representations of peoples identity are included within the definition of portraiture. So is that do you offer a definition of portraiture, within your institutions or do you keep it broad?

- Louise do you wanna start?

- Yeah I mean, I think you know we too have started to look at more diverse interpretations, of what a portrait means recently. We've had an you know, a lot of video works enter the collection and sort of things that border between contemporary art and portraiture which is quite interesting, for us as an organization, because, you know we are part of the same organisation, as the Scottish galleries of Modern Art. So this is quite a lot of them working across the different mediums and disciplines but certainly I think now when someone would consider a or we're considered a commission that we're thinking not just in terms of a painting or a photograph but what best captures that person, you know how they see themselves, how the artist feels like they can best show them to world. So I think increasingly we'll think a bit more, outside the box about what we mean by a portrait and I think that's become expected that it wouldn't just be a traditional painted portrait of a person that's entering a collection now.

- How about you Magda?

- Yeah look, I think similarly, I think in the slides that I just showed you can see how the aesthetic or conceptual questioning, or interrogation of what a portrait is and can be, unfolds through the collection in a way that isn't really about us as the portrait gallery setting those questions but about through our collecting that reflecting, you know critical ideas at the time or artistic movements. And I think in the contemporary period, you know portraiture is such a significant site, for interrogation of identity representation, you know privilege, missing sitters so that all of those ideas still, you know are really important. And at the same time, I think that yes, consciously too, working as a curator at a National Portrait Gallery you know, you are thinking about, you know what a portrait is and certainly, you know, the limits and boundaries and questions, you know, around that. Yeah yeah.

- How about the national in all about in all of our remit and the role of the I suppose, being that idea of this sort of nations family album in terms of our collecting and in terms of how you know, 'cause most family albums consist of a lot of photographs so, is that Louise how do you use sort of see the the Scottish Portrait Gallery as in terms of the nation's family album and looking at yeah.

- Could you share the picture from the McKinnon collection? So Gill mentioned earlier that we recently acquired, acquired 15,000 photographs which were from a collection that had been gathered by a private individual living in Aberdeen. And so this collection has been described as one of the last remaining major collections of Scottish photography. And it is very much about normal people living in Scotland. So it's kind of a way to address the gaps. So it doesn't really have any famous people in it. It doesn't really have any people who would traditionally have been a subject of a portrait gallery but it does show people who were living in Scotland across the 19th and 20th centuries, including some of these really engaging images of young children and the people at work and people at play. So it feels like we're showing a bit of a broader representation of what was going on in Scotland at that time. And photography allows us to do that in a way that you know, paintings often wouldn't have been a lot of normal people wouldn't have had their painting made, but they may have been photographed. So that's something that we're really building on. Could you share the photo of the Last Resident of the Red Road Flats? So this is a recent acquisition which is part of a series of photographs made by Scottish photographer called Chris Leslie where he's been documenting the demolition of tower blocks in Glasgow and the regeneration of the city. And when he was making the photographs, he came across this man who had been an asylum seeker to Scotland and was actually the last person to be living in this condemned block of flats. So he took this, which I think really thoughtful portrait of this man and the freedom that the flats represented to him having escaped a war zone. But it's kind of this idea of showing people who are in Scotland, who makeup, Scotland who aren't famous, who aren't, you know, rich, or, you know have contributed in that way, but we're sort of moving towards a representation of people that's a lot broader. And so that's something that we're really really keen to do.

- You've got a gorgeous family portrait in amongst your slides too Louise, haven't you? Can you show that one?

- Yes so this is a series that was made at the time that the Portrait Gallery was renovated and it was kind of a move towards you know trying to go out there and photograph communities in Scotland. And this is something that I've been building on recently with the grant, from the art fund to collect based around Scotland's upcoming census which has now been rescheduled to Spring 2022. So the idea is to use data to find people who are living in Scotland, who aren't represented in the Portrait Gallery Collection, with the objective, being that hopefully in the future anyone will be able to come into the gallery, and see themselves and feel connected to the collection. So I think that's very topical across portrait galleries around the world. And I know that's what a Magda's been working on with 'Inspiring people'.

- Yeah thanks Louise. You're right. And I think this idea you've just touched on you know if you can't see yourself represented in a museum or the National Portrait Gallery, you know are we really representing who or what you know it is to be, you know, a part of Australian culture, or British culture or you know, Scottish culture. So that's a really important question for us, Louise as you mentioned we're embarking upon a major redevelopment project at the moment called 'Inspiring people'. So our galleries are currently closed not only because of COVID, but for the rebuilding project. And there is a slide that just shows you what the new building will look like when we reopen in 2023. But yeah, I think that that, you know, a key something that the gallery has been talking about quite a lot is the idea of the collection as the nation's family album, you know, but what does that mean yet? You know and how can we build, because 'Inspiring people', isn't only a building project but you can see it's an incredible building project so that we, if you'd been to the Portrait Gallery in London, you'd know you normally come in the front doors off Charing Cross road which is a really, really busy thoroughfare in Central London that, you know, in 1859 or, you know in the 19th century had a very different purpose and use than it does today, so that the Portrait Gallery had this kind of quaint little entrance that you came into but it was quite small and not really fit for purpose in some ways. So you can see that a big part of the redevelopment is this beautiful new entrance. So that, and that offers also a place for people to sit and gather and better access, you know, for wheelchair use and so forth. And then you'll also see that in the in the side next to on top, there's parts of the building that it was called the East wing. and they are currently offices but they're actually beautiful original galleries. So that they're being turned back into galleries for us, which is amazing. And I think it's just important to mention that a really important part of 'Inspiring people' is education and access and learning so that our capacity to do those programs is gonna be so enhanced because we're gonna have these fabulous new education and learning studios. But I think, you know, this idea of the family album and this idea of representation is really important. So that for the first time, whilst the Portrait Gallery in London and also in Australia in Canberra, you know, for you know decades has been really come, all of us I think have been really committed as curators to thinking about representation and diversity. The way it's unfolded at the Portrait Gallery in London has never been sort of holistically looked at. So this opportunity with the building works we've taken everything out of the building and so we're going to and so that, that we're in the process now of this curatorial re-conceptualisation before we put everything back in, you know, and obviously in the history of, in British history you know, there are really tricky questions and narratives that we're trying to deal with. And there are many, many sitters who are missing, who aren't represented but often, you know, the photographs collection does offer a transformative potential Louise as you mentioned, because even really from well perhaps the late 19th century I wouldn't say from the birth of photography, but you know by the time you've got, you know tin-types and so forth, you know photography does become more democratic so that a wider variety of people, you know are photographed and represented. And if we could just show that slide of the tin-types it's quite a nice example. So we have started collecting more broadly than, you know well-known sitters at the Portrait Gallery. And this is just an example. So, so tin-types, you know, in the 1870s became quite a cheap and quick way to make portraits, daguerrotype portraits weren't they were slow and still quite expensive. And you can see here two tin-types of family groups taken at a beach. So this became quite a prevalent kind of photographic business in the late 19th century. And you can see here a family group and an unknown man. So these are acquisitions we've made that are, you know starting to talk about class, for instance, you know to representations of people, you know, beyond, you know the great and the good, if it's okay to go to the slide of Sara Forbes Bonetta, which I think was the third slide. And obviously you know, throughout the 19th century, you know, the idea of cultural diversity and representation of people of color is very thin on the ground, you know certainly in painted portraits and official representations, but you know this is something that we're really committed to looking at. I mean, obviously in the contemporary collections, you know it's a really active and important part of our commissioning and acquisitions to make sure we're collecting as widely and diversely as possible, you know, representing women representing people of all different cultural backgrounds different abilities, you know, different, you know sexual identities and so forth. But you saw there Sara Forbes Bonetta, and that's a portrait of a significant 19th century, you know black woman that was collected early on and is found in the Camille Silvy albums. And here we have these are two early acquisitions actually Queen Victoria seen with Sheikh Chidda there who was an important advisor to Queen Victoria. But you you can sort of also see the complexity of the colonial narratives in these pictures. So you have representation, but they're not straightforward and the complexity of them needs to be discussed and brought forward through our interpretation and Sara Forbes Bonetta's, you know, an example of of a young woman who was brought to Britain, you know, as part of that colonial sort of movement from Africa. And there's quite a few examples in the collections of young people who were sort of from, you know in the colonial period bought from their countries to Britain, you know and how do we talk about those things, for instance, you know, how do we yeah encourage conversations and yeah around the complexity of those representations.

- Just to follow on from that, I was just thinking about how actually our building has got so many, you know now quite dated interpretations of what a portrait is. So we're kind of working with the context that, you know this historic portrait gallery and the restraints that that has upon us as well. So I think I have always seen it that photography's really got that extra kind of ability and beam it to expand the collection of how we're collecting in the future, you know, building on past history. I think that is a particular strength of photographic collections. And that's certainly something we're trying to do. And more and more.

- Yeah, it's interesting photography almost, what I particularly love about photographic portraiture is that comes straight out of life, you know, they're working portraits they're personal portraits you know, there's people don't even necessarily think of these images as portraits, you know, they might be headshots for film or they might be just part of you know, your what's in the bottom drawer of your grandma's cupboard, you know, it's and then you sort of haul these things out of that context and bring them into our context and they become an inspiration. And it's that mixture between like photography as a democratic medium and our context in transforming those images into art and to you know stories that inspire that I think it's particularly profound it's and in terms of in terms about my particular experience of photographic portrait here, it's been very much defined our open call out to all photographic portrait artists, both emerging and professional through the National Photographic Portrait Prize which is about to go into its 14th year. And this is where we see some really, you know you can really track some extraordinary not only some extraordinary, I suppose, generous commitment to the Portrait Gallery's role in terms of being sort of we've talked about being the face of Australia, but we we can say some extraordinary artists just emerge in a way that we would never say so that's Lindy portrait of Lindy Lee by Robert Scott-Mitchell, that was our inaugural winner. And you just saw it was before our People's Choice winner by Clarissa Dempsey who is an NT artist and that's her daughter Taylor you can absolutely see why that one was absolutely completely adorable and just keep going on to for a second. So they're just our winners and just flick through to the Matilda 'cause it's interesting working at the tin-types. or what we've one of the, our works actually just acquired out of this most recent Photographic Portrait Prize is this extraordinary portrait of local Ngambri elder Dr. Matilda House by Brenda L Croft extraordinary First Nations artist here. And she's working in this series around the you know, using this medium but then these really beautifully beautifully rendered extraordinarily iconic photographic portraits. And that's something that, you know, has emerged out of this process of this open call through the Prize. Is that do you both do open have done open call outs for photographic works from all around haven't you?

- Well, the Portrait Gallery yes. Has the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize. And it's a photographic portrait prize that has run over 20 years now. And I do have a couple of images, and I've been fortunate enough to work over that the last few years, but you can see here this is the Prize this year, which we've had to present digitally because of COVID of course. So this is you can see it online if you go to the Portrait Gallery's website, but you know that didn't deter the entrants. We had over 5,000 prints submitted of which there are 60 finalists, roughly that you see in the show, the top slide on the right is the winners. And I'm really thrilled again, I was so excited, you know the prize is judged anonymously, but the three winners this year are three incredible women photographers. And it's just fabulous. But I also, you know in context of this discussion you know, we're so thrilled that there were quite a lot of really strong Australian photographers who were entering portraits that were selected in the final. And you can see there in the slide below a portrait of Tilman Ruff by Nikki Toole, that is also in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra Matthew Thorn's amazing photographic collaborations, portraits of Derrick Lynch an Indigenous man to the left of that. And Tobias Titz's photographic portraits there; a double hang of Tiwi, fabulous Tiwi, collaborative portraits where he takes a Polaroid. And then the artists makes a marking on the other side of the sheet and the Polaroid sheet. There's also, Ingvar Keene some photographs from his Citizen series, which also have been shown in Australia that we are showing this year. And something that we thought was really important to represent was also some ideas around, you know environmental destruction and the bushfires. So there are actually portraits to in this year's Prize that you can't see here, but by a guy called Gideon Mendel who's a South African photographer who photographed the fires in Cobargo and in Australia, and you would have seen on the wall there, just the diversity of sitters the different, you know, cultural backgrounds, you know that we are represented in representing the Prize. But I'm really thrilled to say, not only was it this year a diversity of sitters on the walls, but it was a diversity of photographers, you know, so we had, you know it wasn't, you know, a narrow view from the photographers either. So cultural background, women, you know

- How about in your area Louise?

- So NGS doesn't have a specific photography open call prize so that we have shown Taylor Wessing on a number of occasions, but if I could show the 'You are here' slide. This was an open call exhibition for anybody who wanted to reflect on the events of 2020 you know, how it affected their work, their life how they felt about the future. So this was held in the contemporary gallery at the Portrait Gallery. It's currently closed because of lockdown but it's still continuing online. But we noticed that like a very high percentage, of the people responding to it used photography to express how they'd felt in the last year. And it wasn't restricted to that. We've had drawings, paintings, words, you know, it was as broad as it could be, but we did notice that photography certainly has been a medium that people have turned to, to reflect that. So we did the exhibition display has been changing every week to try and show as much of these responses as possible. So it's kind of a take on a photography prize, but are reflective of the circumstances that we've all lived through. I think as Magda was saying like certainly the census project I'm currently working on one of the main objectives is to support emerging photographers from a wide range of backgrounds and we to particularly bringing more women into the collection and, you know, to be representative and sitter and practitioner, that's definitely a direction, I think that we're going in.

- We've got a very big question but probably a way that we can answer it in a few minutes that we've got left or we could take the rest of time. I think to answer this one from Onisha, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. As curators what do we look for in a great photographic portrait? What a nice one to end on. Do you wanna start Louise?

- I think something that really pulls you into it and wants you to find out the story behind it. I think that's connected to the aesthetic but I think it goes deeper than that. That's what would draw me to a photograph.

- Lovely how about you Magda?

- Gosh, that's such a hard question. I mean I don't have a definitive answer to it so there's lots of different things that can come together to make an incredible photographic portrait. I think, I mean Louise, you mentioned the word connection. I think some kind of connection to sit our connection between photographer and sitter and then us you know audience, but how that is achieved can be magical and mystical and surprising.

- Isn't it? Yeah.

- Oh, you both took the words right out of my mouth. I think that's all that connectedness the presence that the sense of mystery and humanity in a portrait's is what I'm looking for. They're all very undefinable qualities. Aren't they? That you sort of feel in your gut and your heart.

- Yeah

- Yeah.

- Well, that's all we've got time for. I'm afraid that's the end of our 15 Minutes of Frame time now extended 15 Minutes of Frame. And so I just, I'd like to thank you both. This has just been an absolute joy of a discussion so it's so great to join you across the world. So I'm gonna hand back to Gill.

- Thank you so much both of you for joining us today. I can't thank you enough. I know it's been a really tough for you. So you know, we really, really thank you for taking the time out of your schedules. And I was saying to both of you earlier, you know Penny and I feel very fortunate that we in Australia are not going through the same lockdown experience that they are. I think I would have been very reluctant to get out of my pajamas and come into work early in the morning to the National Portrait Gallery of Australia So thank you so much. And thank you to everybody for joining us from all over the world. Thank you for popping your questions into the chat and for joining in the conversation. Thank you for supporting the arts at this time. And please jump on our website and have a look at the other programs that we've got coming up next month. We've got the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland joining us again for another conversation. And we'll also be talking to the National Portrait Gallery in New Zealand. So please we'll have that up on our site very shortly for you to jump on and book in. And we're also gonna have a rolling series of our programs going from here on. So there's always something to find on our website to look in for, stay safe, take care. And we really hope that you join us again in the near future. Thank you everybody.