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This portrait is one of a series of photographs taken while author, journalist and academic Anne Summers AO (b. 1945) was working intensely on her landmark feminist text Damned whores and God’s police (1975). In writing the book, Summers reframed Australian history by centring women’s experiences, arguing that colonisation created a patriarchal order that confined women to the roles of ‘virtuous wives’ or ‘damned whores’. Fifty years after its publication, it remains one of Australia’s best-known feminist histories and a ‘blockbuster’ of its kind. Summers has said that the portraits Jerrems took perfectly capture her anxiety about her partially finished manuscript as well as the steeliness that enabled her to complete it.
Purchased 2012
© The Estate of Carol Jerrems
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
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.
Well behaved women seldom make history, as the saying goes, and the National Portrait Gallery, consequently, is full of awesome Australian women who refused to conform to narrow ideas about their place and their worth.
The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.
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The National Portrait Gallery respects the artistic and intellectual property rights of others. The use of images of works of art reproduced on this website and all other content may be restricted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Requests for a reproduction of a work of art or other content can be made through a Reproduction request. For further information please contact NPG Copyright.
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