© National Portrait Gallery 2025
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Responding in 1978 to Philip Quirk’s unpublished interview question for Rolling Stone magazine, ‘If you could be in any one situation anywhere, at any time with anyone and any camera, what would it be?’ Jerrems answered: ‘With people or one person, natural light, morning or late afternoon, and a 35mm SLR.’
Delicately lit in natural light, this portrait is free of all pretence. Carolyn faces the camera, calm and unharried, her left arm casually draped behind her back. There are very few details in the scene to distract from her unadorned body. What results is an honest portrait, the kind of image Jerrems always strove for.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Gift of Mrs Joy Jerrems 1981.
© The Estate of Carol Jerrems
Carol Jerrems: Portraits is a major exhibition of one of Australia’s most influential photographers. Jerrems’ intimate portraits of friends, lovers and artistic peers transcend the purely personal and have come to shape Australian visual culture.
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