In 1999, ten years after coming to critical attention in Australia, Tracey Moffatt AO (b. 1960) created the one and only self-portrait in her oeuvre. In the hand-coloured photograph, Moffatt presented herself as a photographer, holding a camera in her hands. The black-and-white photograph in this diptych is a different shot from the Self portrait of 1999, although it was clearly taken on the same occasion, with the artist wearing the same knitted olive-green top and head scarf. It features Moffatt's instructions for the retouching of the second image, which was hand-painted at a studio in New York in 2005. Although it appears as though Moffatt is standing in a sun-drenched landscape, the original photographs were taken in a studio in front of a painted set, a reference to the movie-style painted landscape sets in her photographic series Something More (1989) and her short film Night Cries – A Rural Tragedy (1989).
Purchased with funds provided by Tim Fairfax AM 2013
© Tracey Moffatt
Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.
This self-portrait is by Tracey Moffatt in 1999 and 2005. It consists of two photographs next to each other, each approximately 28 cm tall by 35 cm wide, beneath glass in simple white frames.
The photograph on the left is in black and white, apart from some small patches of pale peach painted on to Tracey’s skin, and several swatches of blue at the lower right-hand corner. Tracey is in the foreground. On the lower left, behind her, are some blurry criss-cross shapes and the remainder of the background is plain pale grey.
Tracey has dark hair in a long bob that kicks out below her ears. It is held back from her face with a wide, patterned, fabric headband. The slight angle of her head reveals only one earring; a flat spiral over her right lobe. Her left hand is cupped over her forehead, shielding it, creating a slither of shadow across the top of her brow. The rest of Tracey’s face is bathed in strong light. Her dark eyes look to her left out of the picture and her full lips are closed. In her right hand she holds a Pentax film camera level with her collar-bone, a finger on its trigger. She wears a sleeveless knitted top with a scarf-collar. Part of the scarf is ruffled up as if blowing across her chest and right wrist.
Over the photograph, around and beneath Tracy, handwritten notes are scrawled. These include directions such as ‘make cactus green’, ‘Could you add Asahi PENTAX’, and ‘sunset sky in lens’.
The photograph on the right is a hand-coloured version of the black and white with all the notes removed and instructions followed. The background is bright blue with very subtle horizontal bands of white. The criss-crosses are green, resembling plants growing from sandy-coloured earth.
Tracey’s hair is black, her fabric head scarf has dark rust-coloured markings on a background of pale peach. Her skin is a similar colour, smooth and flawless. Tracey’s eyes are brown, her cheeks are heavily rouged and her lips and fingernails are crimson. The camera she holds is now branded Asahi Pentax, coloured silver and black, pink, blue and orange reflecting in its lens. Her top is olive-green.
Audio description written by Lucie Shawcross and voiced by Annette Twyman
Tracey Moffatt (age 39 in 1999)
Tim Fairfax AC (54 portraits supported)
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