Jack Charles (1943–2022), revered Wiradjuri, Boon Warrung, Dja Dja Wurrung, Woiwurrung and Yorta Yorta Elder, activist, actor, musician and artist, was born at the Cummeragunja Mission on the Murray River and taken from his mother as a baby. Raised in a boys’ home in Melbourne, he was seventeen when he was jailed for the first time, his heroin habit and resort to petty theft seeing him in and out of prison during the subsequent decades. In 1971, he was involved in establishing Nindethana, Australia’s first Indigenous theatre ensemble. He subsequently had roles in the television series Ben Hall, Rush, Gods of Wheat Street, Cleverman, Black Comedy, Play School, Wolf Creek and Preppers and the films The chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Blackfellas, Tracey Moffatt’s Bedevil, Mystery Road and Pan. The subject of the 2008 documentary Bastardy, from 2010 to 2018 Charles toured with his one-man show Jack Charles versus the Crown, which won a Helpmann Award. In 2020 he released his memoir, Jack Charles: Born Again Blakfella.
Rod McNicol met Charles in the early 1970s and made many portraits of his friend over the years. When this portrait won the 2012 National Photographic Portrait Prize, Charles described it as ’a fresh look at me: you can see the whites of my eyes instead of them being bloodshot. You can see this man is beyond reproach, a self-proclaimed elder in his own right now.’
National Photographic Portrait Prize 2012 Winner
Purchased 2013
© Rod McNicol
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