© National Portrait Gallery 2025
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196
National Photographic Portrait Prize 2007 Finalist
There is a certain painting by Rene Magritte titled Young Girl Eating a Bird (1927). A young schoolgirl in a velvet dress edged with lace devours unashamedly a bird, as if it were an apple. My friend Sara has always reminded me of someone belonging to another time in history, with her penchant and obsession for old things. There is a rather fragile beauty to her, and yet like the Magritte painting, a taste for the macabre. Rather than aim for a truthful documentation of Sara, my interest as a photographer is to displace and abstract ordinary gestures into unfamiliar situations. To study minute and private moments, our personal rituals: to examine what happens when people are alone.
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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