Carol Jerrems
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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.’ Carol Jerrems 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 Melbourne, Australia 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, Paul Cox. 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 Victoria 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, Rennie Ellis 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).