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Okay yeah, like two years ago 
two years ago, three years ago,  

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now I won the National Photographic Portrait 
Prize with you, with my portrait of Jack Charles.

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Jack I've known for quite a long time. We 
knew other initially as a fellow actors at  

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the Prime Factory and I photographed him at 
different times over the last 20 odd years.

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Jack is an actor, but I'm not going 
to get Jack to stand in front of me  

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and perform. I really want to have this quiet 
look at the human being I have in front of me.

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Aisle eight in Safeway supermarket, 
that's where I got the phone call  

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and whoever it was - let's say it was Jo - 
said "are you coming up for the opening?" 

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and I thought 'no I'm not really 
thinking of coming up for the opening', 

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and Jo said "well you should" and I 
thought 'I'm gonna let you off the hook'. 

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"Why should I come up?"
and she said I'd won the prize. 

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So that made for a very different 
trip to the supermarket.

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Look winning a prize like 
that is pretty monumental. 

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It came at a really fortuitous time for me. 
I could then take a bit of space in my life  

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and move towards having what was to be 
a major survey show of my work that was  

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to come at Monash Gallery of Art, part of which 
was picked up by the National Portrait Gallery.

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I think it's really important that we do 
have things like the National Photographic  

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Portrait Prize because if we if we don't have 
examples like that we're going to get swamped a  

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little bit by sea of images that leave us mildly 
interested for a few seconds and then they get  

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swamped by the next lot coming through and 
nothing is going to have much resonance.

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So I think it's important that we still have 
some pursuit of excellence in image making  

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and the National Photographic Portrait 
Prize provides a venue for people who are  

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who are seeking to be passionate 
about their use of particular media.