SCREEN EDUCATION

KATE RAYNOR STUDYGUIDE 1 ‘Nothing is permanent. Everything is in a continual state of change, movement. Nothing lasts forever, except the life force itself.’

Introduction the work itself, and Drayton has assembled a marvellous selection of images to add depth and nuance to Girl in a irl in a Mirror is a beautifully constructed Mirror. Finally, Jerrems emerges from this complex por- documentary exploration of the life and trait as a challenging, intense woman, whose art deserves times of Australian photographer Carol greater recognition. Jerrems. Filmmaker Kathy Drayton pulls together a fascinating array of people Carol Jerrems’ Biography – friends, lovers, colleagues, the many Gand varied subjects of Jerrems’ work – to attest to the force Carol Jerrems was born in , in 1949, of her creative personality and to offer varied insights into and grew up in the middle-class suburb of Ivanhoe. Be- the decade in which Jerrems was at her peak, the 1970s. tween 1967 and 1970, she studied art and design at Prah- Jerrems’ extensive body of work serves in some sense as ran College, majoring in photography under the tutelage of an embodiment of the 1970s in Australia, a decade defi ned photographer and fi lm director, . Her confi dence in by its challenges to convention, morality and social order. her calling was such that in her second year at college she She was always to be found with a camera, document- designed a stamp: ‘Carol Jerrems, Photographic Artist’. All ing the urban counterculture through which she moved, of her fi nished prints were to be stamped with it. Her gift for determined and disciplined in her approach to her art-form. photography was immediately evident at Prahran. In 1968, Jerrems’ life was shaped by her sense of adventure and cu- she was awarded the Walter Lindrum scholarship; in 1970, riosity. Her need to establish a feeling of intimacy with her she won the Australian Photographer’s Award; and in 1971, subjects often led her to take great personal risks, and, it she won the Kodak Student’s Photographic Competition. could be argued, questionable judgments and relationships. But alongside any of her character fl aws, there is always Jerrems acted in two of Cox’s early fi lms, Skin Deep (1968) SCREEN EDUCATION

Curriculum Links > This documentary would be of interest and relevance to VCE SOSE, Media Studies, Art and Technical Photography. It may also have application at a tertiary level in Cultural Studies, Art and Photography.

PREVIOUS PAGE: SELF-PORTRAIT IN FRONT OF POSTERS, 1976 (CAROL JERREMS). ABOVE: SELF-PORTRAIT IN HOSPITAL MIRROR, 1979 (POSTHUMOUS PRINT CAROL JERREMS ARCHIVE). 2 CAROL, PRAHRAN 1971 (ROBERT ASHTON)

and The Journey (1972). She was also filmed by fellow herself and the people around her. She was immersed student Ian Macrae in 1971 for a clip which appeared on in the counterculture of the 1970s, and her moody por- Fly Wrinklies Fly, a wildly experimental TV variety show pro- traits capture the spirit of her bohemian world. She also duced by Macrae, which had a very short run on Channel 9 portrayed the disenfranchised, in powerful, mysterious (under Clyde Packer) in Melbourne. It was in this milieu that portraits of women, children, youth gangs and Indigenous Jerrems met cinematographer and filmmaker Michael Edols people. Her tools were simple: natural light, Kodak Tri X film and writer–director Esben Storm, who became important and a hand-held Pentax SLR camera. She would spend influences in her life and work. hours in the darkroom producing perfect prints.

Jerrems’ rise as a photographer coincided with the rise of Jerrems’ contact with the world of filmmaking informed her photography as an art form in Australia. She was one of groundbreaking achievements as a photographer and she Australia’s first photographers to be collected by the major was instrumental in pushing the boundaries of her art form. galleries in her lifetime. With remarkable prescience, Jenny She saw the traditional documentary photographer’s role as Boddington at the National Gallery of began col- exploitative, and developed instead a very personal, open lecting some of Jerrems’ student work in 1971, and James style, collaborating with her subjects in their representation, Mollison began buying her work for the National Gallery of often including herself in reflections within the frame. Australia in 1976. Jerrems is best known for her iconic photograph, Vale In 1972, established Brummels, Australia’s first Street, taken in 1975. This photograph powerfully repre- dedicated photography gallery. He selected Henry Talbot and sents the brash sexuality of Australian youth in the 1970s, Carol Jerrems for its opening exhibition, entitled Erotica. Jer- a sexuality laced with vulnerability and darkness. It is seen rems posed for some of Talbot’s work for this show, as well as a significant moment in Australian photography, as it as exhibiting her own work. Around this time she also posed bridges documentary realism and the more subjective style for photographers Rennie Ellis and Robert Ashton. In 1975, of photography that marks the postmodern era.

The Australian Centre for Photography opened in Sydney, SCREEN EDUCATION and Jerrems had her first exhibition there in January 1976. Jerrems struggled financially as an artist and supported herself teaching art and photography part-time. She taught Portraiture was Jerrems’ domain and she photographed at Heidelberg and Coburg Technical Schools in Melbourne

3 CRONULLA 1977 CAROL JERREMS

between 1973 and 1975; and at the Australian Centre of mercial nature of this work and it gave rise to tensions in Photography, Hornsby, and Meadowbank Technical Col- their relationship. They separated shortly afterwards. leges in Sydney from 1976 to 1978. In 1979, Jerrems accepted a teaching position at the Uni- It was at Heidelberg Technical School that Jerrems met Ron versity of Tasmania in Hobart. Shortly after arriving there, it Johnson, who introduced her to Melbourne’s Indigenous became evident that she was suffering from a mysterious community. Her intimate portraits of urban Aboriginal peo- and debilitating illness. She spent most of this year in and ple from Sydney and Melbourne are unique for the 1970s, out of hospital. She continued to photograph herself and and form a significant aspect of her oeuvre. the people around her, sending her negatives for process- ing to friend and fellow photographer Roger Scott. (Scott The following year (1974) at Heidelberg, Jerrems met Mark printed these photographs for Girl in a Mirror.) She also Lean and Jon Bourke, who were to become two of her most kept a journal in which she reflected on her life, her art, and memorable photographic subjects (they appear in Vale her intuitive sense of approaching death. Street). Mark and Jon were part of the sharpie sub-culture that had emerged in Melbourne at the time. Jerrems shot Ultimately unable to continue with photography, her final some 16mm film of these boys as part of an unsuccessful ap- piece of creative expression took the form of an illustrated plication for funding for a docu-drama (working title: School’s book about the family, made as a gift for her mother. Its Out). clever collages of images taken from women’s magazines permeate her story with a gentle irony and humour. In 1975, Jerrems was given a grant by the Australian Film Commission to make a short experimental narrative film The doctors were confounded as Jerrems’ health slowly but about the impact of rape, entitled Hanging About. It was steadily deteriorated. After many months of invasive and completed in 1979 and screened at the Sydney Film Festi- painful testing they diagnosed polycythemia, a rare, blood- val in 1980, a few months after her death. related cancer. This gave rise to a secondary condition

known as Budd Chiari Syndrome. Jerrems was flown back SCREEN EDUCATION In 1977, Jerrems worked as a stills photographer on In to Melbourne, where she died in the Alfred Hospital on 21 Search of Anna, a film written, directed and produced by February 1980, three weeks before her thirty-first birthday. her lover, Esben Storm. She felt compromised by the com-

4 KATHY DRAYTON, WRITER–DIRECTOR (LUDWIK DABROWSKI)

After Carol’s death, her mother bequeathed all of her work Woman 1975, Young Women’s Christian Association, 1975. to the National Gallery of Australia. They now hold a huge Australian Photography 1976, Globe Publishing Company. archive: student work, negatives, proof sheets, reject prints Australian Photography 1978, Globe Publishing Company. and a large collection of fine prints. In 1990, Bob Jenyns Aspects of the Philip Morris Collection: Four Australian Pho- (University of Tasmania) and Helen Ennis (Australian Na- tographers, Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, 1979. tional University) organised a large travelling retrospective, entitled Living in the Seventies. This was the last significant (See References section at the end of this guide for sug- exhibition of Jerrems’ work. (The catalogue was published gested general readings on photography.) by the National Gallery of Australia.) Kathy Drayton: Director’s Statement Although Jerrems has had a lasting influence on the gen- erations of photographers after her, very little of her work s I researched [Girl in a Mirror], I found each and has been published. In 1974, Maurie Schwartz set up Out- every one of Carol’s friends and family, as well as back Press and released A Book About Australian Women, Athe photographic community, to be overwhelmingly a cheaply-printed collection of Jerrems’ photographs with generous and open in their support for the film. They were text by Virginia Fraser, timed to coincide with International unanimous in their desire for Carol’s artistic achievement to Women’s Year (Virginia Fraser with Carol Jerrems, A Book be celebrated and brought into the public eye, and I have About Australian Women, North Fitzroy, Outback Press, felt hugely privileged and honoured to be trusted with this 1974). Jerrems also photographed Australian rock band task. Skyhooks for their book, Million Dollar Riff (Jennifer Lois Brown, Skyhooks: Million Dollar Riff, Dingo Books, 1975). The significant features of Carol’s work were her self-reflex- iveness and her development of a cinematic photographic Helen Ennis has published a number of insightful essays style that played in the blurred boundaries and tensions about Jerrems’ work and selected photographs have ap- between documentary and a constructed or directed style peared in the following surveys of Australian photography: of portraiture; this involved a certain complicity with her SCREEN EDUCATION subjects. Her photographic work reflects the exploration Graham Howe, New Photography Australia: A Selective of her identity and its limits, through her relationships with Survey, Australian Centre for Photography, 1974. others. I felt this called for a poetic and open style of biog-

5 VALE STREET 1975 (CAROL JERREMS) 20.2 X 30.3 CM PRINTED IMAGE. GELATIN SILVER PHOTOGRAPH. NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA.

raphy, and determined early on to construct it from Carol’s spirit and dedication to her art, especially in combination with photographs, writings and films as far as possible… the photographs she took there. With this in mind, I decided to use them throughout the film, and it was this decision that Through her eyes, the film gives a uniquely immediate and determined the flash forward structure of the film. intimate account of her life’s journey through the counter- culture of Australia in this decade… DISCUSSION POINTS AND ACTIVITIES

As well as hundreds of Carol’s prints, I was given access to Girl in a Mirror: The Film all of her proof sheets and negatives, which are absolutely brimming with strikingly beautiful and evocative sequences • Discuss the significance of the title. perfect for translation to film. I selected around 250 new • Suggest three other possible titles for this documentary. prints, which the celebrated Sydney photographer and Explain your selections. master printer Roger Scott, and Barry Le Lievre from the • Design a poster to promote the film. Annotate your National Gallery of Australia, printed up for us. The finished poster, explaining your decisions in the context of the film is constructed from 166 new prints from Carol’s archive film and its target audience. and seventy-three of her own fine prints. We also used ap- • Who do you think this film is aimed at? Do you need to proximately thirty photographs of Carol from the archives of be familiar with Jerrems’ work and milieu for the film to Rennie Ellis, Robert Ashton and Henry Talbot. Cinematog- work? rapher Anna Howard worked lovingly and painstakingly to • List five means by which the documentary conveys a ensure that the reproduction of these photographs on video sense of Jerrems, her art and life. (For example, voice- match the original prints as accurately as possible. over narration extracted from Jerrems’ diaries; dramatic re-enactments shot from Jerrems’ point-of-view; hand- From 1975 onwards, Carol kept prolific personal notes, cop- written diary extracts appearing on the screen; interview ies of her letters, darkroom notes, and journal writings. I drew material with friends and colleagues; reproductions of on them directly as a way of incorporating Carol’s voice into her work; photos of her taken by others; selections from SCREEN EDUCATION the film and we filmed all of the re-enactments from Car- her short films; shots of photos emerging in the devel- ol’s point of view to try to reinforce this sense of Carol. The oping tray.) Discuss these aspects of the film and how journals that Carol kept in hospital were most evocative of her they function. (For example, there is a sense in which

6 REGENT ST, 1975 (CAROL JERREMS).

the voice-over narration gives Jerrems a living presence Translations was the perfect choice. With influences from within the text, capturing a sense of her vibrancy and the ’70s, his music has great range in style. He plays vitality rather than consigning her to the status of ‘dead Eastern as well as traditional Western instruments, which I artist’.) felt reflected Carol’s interest in mysticism and her fascina- • What is the purpose and effect of the dramatic re-en- tion with other cultures. Like Carol’s work, the beauty in actments? Most of these sequences concern Jerrems’ Walker’s music comes from its simplicity, its playfulness, hospitalization. Why do you think this might be? and the sense it conveys of an emotional honesty, perme- • Consider the structure of the documentary. It eschews ated with melancholy. His music resonates profoundly a strictly chronological retelling of the key events of Jer- with Carol’s story and images, making a huge contribution rems’ life. What effect does foreknowledge of her grave to the spirit and emotion of the film. illness have on the tone of the film? • What do you think the filmmakers set out to achieve Write a brief account of the way in which music func- with this film? Do you think they succeeded? Consider tions in this documentary, citing examples from specific the director’s statement above. sequences to support your observations. • Write a 500 word review of Girl in a Mirror to be pub- lished in the TV Review section of a national newspaper. On Photography • Imagine you have been commissioned to make a docu- mentary about a little-known local artist. Outline your Any portrait is a combination of something of the subject’s research steps – where would you look for information? personality and something of the photographer’s. Who might be able to provide you with assistance? Carol Jerrems • Imagine you had the opportunity to interview the film’s director, Kathy Drayton. Compile a list of four questions • Jerrems says: ‘One approaches a subject as one ap- you would ask her with about the film, its genesis, the proaches anyone.’ Do you think it is essential for a pho- filmmaking process, etc. tographer to have a strong rapport with their subject?

• With regard to the film’s use of music, Drayton says: • Jerrems describes a photo as ‘a moment preserved, SCREEN EDUCATION an exchange’. Every photograph records a moment, I wanted music composed for the film which would func- but also a process, a series of choices and decisions tion to evoke Carol’s inner life. J. Walker from Machine made by the photographer in collaboration with, or at

7 ESBEN SMOKING, 1976 (CAROL JERREMS)

least relationship to, the subject. Like all relationships, a photograph of someone else.’ Discuss. the one between photographer and subject has its own • Imagine you have been commissioned to take two por- specific power dynamic. Describe a scenario in which traits. One is of a famous person (choose anyone who that relationship might become exploitative. interests you, either living or dead), and the other is of • What makes a good portrait? Bring in a portrait that you a member of your own family. Write an account of your think works and explain why it succeeds for you. intentions with each image, referring to lighting, set- • Essay topic: ‘Why must photographers endlessly pho- ting, use of props, pose, expression, emphases, effects, tograph burlesque dancers, hookers, junkies and the composition, etc. ‘demi-monde’, when there is as much art and truth to • Bring to class a photograph of yourself that you like, be found in the faces of people queuing at the super- that somehow says something personal and meaningful market check-out?’ Discuss. about you. • One of her former students says that Jerrems taught • Map out a self-portrait that includes three props. him to never take anything at face value. And yet isn’t Choose significant objects that reveal something about there a sense in which the art of photography is very you. much concerned with the surface appearances of • Essay topic: ‘The camera is both weapon and shield.’ things? Discuss the concepts of surface and depth in Discuss. photographic art. • Filmmaker Paul Cox describes himself and Carol pho- Jerrems At Work tographing each other, passing the camera back and forth, as ‘some sort of voodoo, a mad exchange’. What • Write a critical appraisal of Jerrems’ work. do you make of this analogy? • What is Jerrems’ artistic and cultural significance? • Essay topic: ‘The art of the nude may sometimes be • What influences can you detect in Jerrems’ work? driven by an impulse to celebrate the beauty of the hu- • Describe Jerrems’ photographic style to someone unfa- man form. Whatever its objective, it is often premised miliar with her work.

on an idea that some essential truth can be captured • What preoccupations can you isolate in Jerrems’ work? SCREEN EDUCATION when a subject’s clothes are removed.’ Discuss. What inferences can you make about her sensibility and • Essay topic: ‘A photograph of one’s self will always offer her world view? the possibility of greater exposure and authenticity than • In one of her many self-portraits, Jerrems captures her

8 RAPE GAME, 1975 (CAROL JERREMS)

naked reflection in a mirror, her face obscured by her She participated in something called ‘the rape game’ camera. How do you interpret this image? – as one of the subjects, now a middle-aged man, puts it: • What are the key features of the milieu in which Jerrem ‘Whatever we suggested, she went along with because lived and worked? she wanted to take the photographs.’ What do you think • Essay topic: ‘Carol Jerrems work is clearly a product of of Jerrems’ professional conduct in this context? Can art her times.’ Discuss. always justify the means by which it is attained? • The 1972 exhibition at Brummels, ‘Two Views of • The skinheads took their style from A Clockwork Orange. Erotica’, featured the work of two photographers, Jer- As one of them comments: ‘We were playing at being rems and Henry Talbot. As well as contributing her own louts and hoods … she wanted to perceive us as worse work to the show, Jerrems also posed nude for Talbot. than we were.’ Why might Jerrems have invested in an Describe the intention behind this exhibition. idea of these 15-year-old suburban boys being more • One of Jerrems’ friends, Michael, found himself in a very violent and aggressive than they actually were? Might she dangerous situation with Jerrems taking photographs have deliberately overlooked the element of performance of Aborigines in a pub in Redfern. The night ended with that existed in this sub-culture? Is there a sense in which two cracked ribs for Michael and all the windows and she could be criticized for trying to shock the middle- headlights of his car smashed in. As he recalls it, he class mores of which she herself was a product? thought, ‘What the hell are we doing here?’ What do • The shoot that produced Jerrems’ iconic image of Ca- you think was Jerrems’ intention? triona Brown topless and flanked by two tattooed young • Jerrems once asked one of her Indigenous students, skinheads, Vale Street, is discussed at some length. ‘What’s it like being black?’ He responded, ‘It’s harsh.’ Catriona says she is proud to be a part of this work, How would you describe her portraits of Indigenous which she feels suggests a sense of hope. Do you see Australians? the photo as evoking a mood of hope? • One of Jerrems’ major series featured a group of skin- • Catriona Brown says that during the shoot Jerrems heads she taught at Heidelberg Tech. Again, she put gave them a joint ‘to help them relax’, and Jon and

her personal safety on the line. She recounts how she Mark said that it was Jerrems’ idea for them all to take SCREEN EDUCATION was bashed over the head and regularly had money and their tops off. Catriona also mentions that she and cigarettes stolen. A friend notes she was disturbed by Jerrems were more sexually sophisticated than the Jerrems’ relationship with these young men. It would 15-year-old boys and that this was a joke between seem she had sexual encounters with several of them. them. However, Catriona was unaware of Carol’s sexual 9 SHARPIES MELBOURNE, 1976 (CAROL JERREMS)

relationship with the boys. What does this reveal to you from the documentary that you would choose to fea- about Jerrems’ working methods and her attitudes to ture. Explain your selection. her subjects, and how do you think this impacted on the • What can you discover about Jerrems’ short film, Hang- images that she produced? ing About (1977)? • Imagine Vale Street with the models fully clothed. How • The final words of the film belong to Jerrems: ‘An artist would this have changed the nature of this image? can never be free. Art possesses one, or talent possesses • Vale Street is possibly Jerrems’ most renowned image. one. What is meant by, “To know is to share”?’ Why might What factors and qualities account for its status within the filmmakers have chosen these words to conclude Jerrems’ oeuvre? Is it particularly representative of her their portrait of Jerrems? Can you devise an answer for style and concerns? the question left hanging over the ending of the film? • Why might the mirror have been a source of fascination for Jerrems? Perceptions of Carol • ‘She did not use flash or distorting wide-angle lenses because she wanted her photographs to be “natural” Silent laughing going on… and “real”’ (Groves online artist biographies). Why are Ross Hannaford on Carol Jerrems the words natural and real in inverted commas in this quote? Is that level of authenticity attainable? • List five facts you learn about Carol Jerrems from this • Jerrems’ work has been compared to that of artists documentary.

such as and Larry Clarke. What do you • Compile a brief biography of Jerrems, in point form, SCREEN EDUCATION make of this comparison? What similarities and differ- outlining the defining moments of her life and career. ences can you detect? See the biography above for key dates. • Imagine you have the opportunity to curate a retrospec- • The film incorporates many images of Jerrems, both still tive of Jerrems’ work. Write the program notes for this and moving. What sense of her is conveyed by these exhibition. What would you entitle it? Select four images images? Choose two portraits of Jerrems that feature in 10 the film. What aspects of her nature, life and personality would have benefited from the inclusion of her mother do they highlight? How do they do this? Present your and brothers? What insights might her family have of- analysis to the class. fered? Do you think the filmmakers might have deliber- • Filmmaker Paul Cox taught Jerrems during her time at ately chosen to exclude this element from their film? Prahran. He says she was his best student and de- • Jerrems describes her mother as ‘one of the few people scribes her as daring: ‘She was fearless, [which is] the with the ability to push me over the edge into tears’. mark of a true artist … with a gift like that, it’s ridiculous Describe a person in your life who has a similar ability. to be cautious.’ Esben Storm, filmmaker and former lov- Having stated that her mother can reduce her to tears, er, also talks at length about Jerrems’ pursuit of truth, at another point in the film, Jerrems refers to her as her her willingness to ‘go to the edge’ and take herself to ‘a ‘best and dearest friend’. How do contradictions such place of risk’. Jerrems comments, ‘Courage is impor- as this function in terms of our understanding of Jer- tant’. Why? How does Jerrems’ ‘fearlessness’ manifest rems and her relationships? itself in her work? What evidence is there of this bravery • What sense do you get of Jerrems’ background? in the documentary? • Would Jerrems have been a good teacher? Why/why • Jerrems’ dog was called Free. Her flatmate, Mirta not? In what ways? Is there a sense in which Jerrems’ Mizza, says an idea of freedom was very important to relationships with some of her students were inappro- Jerrems. Explain what she might mean by this. What priate, even exploitative? does freedom mean to you? • One of Jerrems’ friends hypothesizes that she searched • Imagine you could interview Jerrems. Make a list of five for extremes because she had trouble feeling things and questions you would like to ask her about her life, and knowing what her feelings meant. Explain how you inter- five questions about her work. pret this, and how you thnk it may have affected Jerrems’ • Paul Cox says Jerrems stood out: ‘She was odd.’ Do photography and her relationships with her subjects. you get a sense of this ‘oddness’ from the film? • Esben Storm says that Jerrems was very intense and • Ross Hannaford admits he was initially scared of Carol, that living with her ‘became too heavy, too hard, not fun partly because she was so serious and ‘the first feminist any more’. Mention is made of her proclivity to depres- I ever met’. He relates an anecdote in which she told sion. One flatmate says, ‘You would know she was him sternly not to call her ‘baby’. What makes Jerrems depressed when her bedroom door was closed – and it a feminist? could stay closed for hours or days’. She queries: ‘Why • One of her many flatmates, a 19-year-old art student, can’t I be a normal and happy person? Find content- tells how he first met Jerrems when she strode into the ment?’ Discuss the relationship between creativity and bathroom while he was having a bath, bent down and mental illness. Is there truth in the longstanding myth of washed her hands in the bath water between his legs. the suffering, tormented artist? What do you make of this anecdote? • Essay topic: Girl In A Mirror attempts to offer a complex • Jerrems’ sense of experimentation and adventurous- portrait of Jerrems. Do you think it succeeds? Or does it ness extended to her sexuality. Esben Storm comment- lapse into perpetuating clichéd ideas about artists – the ed that the intimacy forged by her sexual relationships fearless artist liberated from all prosaic social conven- allowed her to take photograhs that were intimate. What tion; the suffering artist paying for her creativity with do you think of this relationship between her sexuality bouts of crushing depression; the artist as a beacon of and her photography? Is it exploitative? To what extent truth and honesty. Do you think Jerrems was an artist do you think this would have been a product of the of honesty, integrity and courage, or did she simply 1970’s counterculture ideals of freedom and love? succumb to performing these myths of the artist’s life • Esben Storm says that they all believed it was ‘uncool’ through her work? to be possessive or jealous: ‘We believed in free love, even though we weren’t that free.’ What attitudes to On Death and Dying personal relationships are intrinsic to the idea of free love? What might a person be trying to free him or Doctors prefer to tell you how you are, rather than ask you herself from? Why might love not be free? Describe the how you feel. photo Carol took of one of Esben’s girlfriends, Diane. Carol Jerrems What does her expression convey? • Carol’s friend, Mirta Mizza, says that Carol had difficul- • Jerrems says of her illness: ‘The only way to solve these ties in her relationships with women. She ‘didn’t know problems is to go through them.’ How would you char- what the language was’, she said what she thought or acterize her approach to this crisis in her life? what she felt, she didn’t say ‘the right thing’. What do • In a display of the bravery that many of her friends and these reflections add to our sense of the way Jerrems colleagues comment on, Jerrems chose to document functioned in her personal life? her own death: she photographed the end of her own

• We don’t learn a great deal about Jerrems’ family back- life, in raw and confronting images of the physical body SCREEN EDUCATION ground. She had two brothers, Ken and Lance; her father breaking down. She says, with a certain detachment, died when she was young, and her relationship with her that death is a matter of fact in hospital, and that while mother was fraught. Do you think the portrait of Jerrems the prospect of one’s own demise is initially ‘quite a

11 mouthful to swallow’, it is really just another experience. Photography, Sydney,1999. In all the voice-over extracts from this period there is very little mention of pain and there is no self-pity or Vicki Goldberg, Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to fear. She speaks of her many months in hospital as ‘a the Present, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1981. bitter-sweet dream experience’. In what way might she understand this time to be at all ‘sweet’? Robert Hirsch, Seizing the Light: A History of Photography, • How might Jerrems’ facility to document the decline of McGraw Hill, Boston, 2000. her body have helped her cope with the process of dy- ing? Ian Jeffrey, ReVisions: An Alternate History of Photography, • Jerrems speaks vaguely about her illness: a rare, myste- The National Museum of Photography, Bradford, 1999. rious condition, cause unknown, something to do with too many cells, too much blood, a clot in a major vein Brooks Johnson (ed.), Photography Speaks: Sixty-Six draining from the liver. Why might the filmmakers have Photographers on their Art, The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, chosen not to clarify her condition or to give further Virginia, 1989. medical comment? • Towards the end of her life, friends noted there was a Stuart Koop (ed.), A Small History of Photography, The sense in which Jerrems was withdrawing, disengaging by Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, 1997. degrees. Her hospital room window looked out on to a brick wall. Why is this a grim irony? Visitors were made to Gilles Mora, Photospeak: A Guide to the Ideas, Movements wear hospital gowns, but she would insist her friend Mirta and Techniques of Photography, 1839 to the Present, Ab- lift up her white shroud to reveal her clothes underneath. beville Press, New York, 1998. Why was this gesture important to Jerrems? • She died in February 1980, just three weeks before her Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography: From 1839 thirty-first birthday. Write a eulogy for Jerrems to be to the Present, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, published in a national newspaper. What aspects of her 1982. life and work would you choose to commemorate? Beaumont Newhall (ed.), Photography: Essays and Images, REFERENCES Secker and Warburg, London, 1985.

There are only a limited number of texts that directly refer- Naomi Rosenblum, A World History of Photography, Ab- ence Jerrems and her work. These are cited in the section beville Press, New York, 1984. that outlines Jerrems’ biography. The following texts are suggested starting points for a deeper analysis of the art Naomi Rosenblum, A History of Women Photographers, and craft of photography. It is such a huge field that these Abbeville Press, New York, 1994. references can only ever be selective, and many significant titles will necessarily be absent. The few web site ad- Susan Sontag, On Photography, Penguin, London, 2002. dresses given at the end of this guide make brief mention of Jerrems, but offer little of substance. Carol Squiers, The Critical Image: Essays on Contemporary Photography, Bay Press, Seattle, 1990. Terry Barrett, Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images, Mayfield Publishing, California, John Szarkowski, Looking At Photographs; One Hundred 1990. Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1999. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photog- raphy, (trans.) Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, New York Alan Trachtenberg (ed.), Classic Essays on Photography, 1981. Leete’s Island Books, New Haven, 1980.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Penguin, Harmondsworth, Liz Wells (ed.), The Photography Reader, Routledge, Lon- 1972. don, 2003.

John Berger and Jean Mohr, Another Way of Telling, Pan- Anne-Marie Willis, Picturing Australia: A History of Photog- theon Books, New York, 1982. raphy, Angus and Robertson, North Ryde, NSW, 1988.

Victor Burgin (ed.), Thinking Photography, Macmillan, Lon- don, 1982. Internet Sites SCREEN EDUCATION

Blair French (ed.), Photo Files: An Australian Photography wwar.com/masters/j/jerrems-carol.html Reader, Power Publications and The Australian Centre for wwar.com/masters/j/jerrems-carol-links.html

12 HELEN BOWDEN, PRODUCER GIRL IN A MIRROR

GIRL IN A MIRROR: A PORTRAIT OF CAROL JERREMS Writer–Director: Kathy Drayton Producer: Helen Bowden Co-producer: Frank Haines Cinematographer: Anna Howard (ACS) Editor: Anna Craney Script Editor: Miro Bilbrough Music: J. Walker Sound Recordist: Paul Finalay Sound Designer: Annie Breslin Carol’s Voice: Justine Clark Printing from Jerrems’ Archive: Roger Scott & Barry Le Lievre Graphics: Scott Anderson & Antonia Fredman Duration: 55 Minutes Year of Production: 2005 Financed by Film Finance Corporation Australia Developed and Produced in Association with The Australian Broadcasting Corporation

www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/deepend/stories/s1388452.htm magazine.com.au or email: [email protected] www.acp.au.com/exhibitions/2004/30events.php Notice: An educational institution may make copies of all The last link features ‘30 events to celebrate three decades or part of this Study Guide, provided that it only makes and of the ACP Gallery’, including ‘You’re Among Equals: Carol uses copies as reasonably required for its own educational, Jerrems Remembered’. Also see notes for the Complic- non-commercial, classroom purposes and does not sell or ity exhibition at ACP January 2000, featuring Jerrems and lend such copies. several other artists.

Kate Raynor has a Phd. in Cinema Studies and is a free- lance writer.

Toi-Toi Films Pty Ltd, PO Box 49, Potts Point, NSW 1335 Australia. Ph: (61 2) 9358 4847 Fax: (61 2) 9358 4846 email: [email protected] SCREEN EDUCATION This study guide was produced by ATOM. For more infor- mation about ATOM study guides, The Education Shop, The Speakers’ Bureau or Screen Hub (the daily online film and television newsletter) visit our web site: www.metro-

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