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Vanity Fair Portraits

Vanity Fair Portraits traces the birth and evolution of photographic portraiture through the archives of Vanity Fair magazine.

First Ladies

First Ladies profiles women who have achieved noteworthy firsts over the past 100 years.

Time and light

This sample of 56 photographs takes in some of the smallest photographs we own and some of the largest, some of the earliest and some of the most recent, as well as multiple photographic processes from daguerreotypes to digital media.

Announcing... Portrait23: Identity

In this major new exhibition marking the National Portrait Gallery’s third decade, 23 Australian artists and collectives have been invited to create portraits without constraints or boundaries.

Our achievements to date

During the period 2018–20, the Gallery implemented our first Access Action Plan.

9 lives of Karin Catt

Australian photographer Karin Catt has shot across the spectrum of celebrity, her subjects including rock stars, world leaders and actors.

Ready , set... shoot

The exhibition Flash: Australian Athletes in Focus offers various interpretations of sporting men and women by five Australian photographers.

The National Portrait Prizes

The National Portrait Gallery today announced finalists for the inaugural Darling Portrait Prize, a national new $75,000 prize for Australian portrait painting, and released selected images from the final prize pool for the popular National Photography Portrait Prize.

2023 Annual Appeal

In 2023 the Annual Appeal was focussed on a work by one of Australia's best loved and most successful portrait painters, Judy Cassab AO CBE, depicting model, entrepreneur and deportment icon, June Dally-Watkins OAM.

2022 Annual Appeal

In 2022 the Annual Appeal was focussed on Mayatjara by Robert Fielding, a series of 24 photographs of Elders of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara community.

Primed

Seventeen of Australia’s thirty prime ministers to date are represented in the contrasting sizes, moods and mediums of these portraits.

Portrait Donors

Annual Appeal

International issue

Michael Desmond looks at the history of the Vanity Fair magazine in conjunction with the exhibition Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008

See through me

Penelope Grist and Rebecca Ray talk to the artists in Portrait23: Identity about transcending modes of portraiture.

The long game

Penelope Grist spends some quality time with the Portrait Gallery’s summer collection exhibition, Eye to Eye.