Skip to main content
Menu

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 both past and present.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that this website contains images of deceased persons.

Helen Ennis

In Conversation

Streamed live at 2:00pm (AEST), Saturday 2nd July 2022
Helen Ennis
Video: 47 minutes

Australian photography curator, historian and writer, Helen Ennis, joins us for a conversation about photographers challenging the conventions of personal and public space in their portraits. Helen investigates portraits from our Collection, the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2022 and Shakespeare to Winehouse: Icons from the National Portrait Gallery, London. What happens when photographers get close, perhaps too close, to their famous subjects?

Helen Ennis is a writer on photography and a biographer. She was formerly Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Australia, and Director of the ANU’s Centre for Art History and Art Theory and the Sir William Dobell Chair of Art History. Her biographies Margaret Michaelis: Love, loss and photography (2005) and Olive Cotton: A life in photography (2019) have been widely acclaimed. In 2020 Helen was awarded the Magarey Medal for Biography and the J Dudley Johnston Medal from the Royal Photographic Society, London. She is Emeritus Professor, ANU School of Art & Design.

Video transcript
© National Portrait Gallery 2024
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia

Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196

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.

This website comprises and contains copyrighted materials and works. Copyright in all materials and/or works comprising or contained within this website remains with the National Portrait Gallery and other copyright owners as specified.

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.

The National Portrait Gallery is an Australian Government Agency