© National Portrait Gallery 2025
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National Photographic Portrait Prize 2024 Finalist
Dean Cross
Worimi
born Australia 1986
Old growth/New growth 2023
pigment photographic print on paper
‘This image was made in an old growth forest in a secret corner of Walbunja Country near Braidwood, NSW, four days before the birth of our twins. Both photographer and subject are on a precipice; our world was about to change forever. Like the seed that preceded that giant tree, our boys contain a universe and that universe is contained within my wife Bridgette. The joy she possessed in that moment has carried through every day of being with our boys; a mother blossoming like the small white flowers of the tree behind her.’
Based on Walbunja Country, Dean Cross is an artist and Worimi man through his paternal bloodline. He is interested in the collision of materials, ideas and histories, and enacts First Nations sovereignty through expanded contemporary art methodologies.
The National Photographic Portrait Prize 2024 celebrates established and emerging artistic talent from across the country.
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