The photography of Carol Jerrems boasts Australia's highest-priced photo – in pictures

Carol Jerrems was a Melbourne-based photographer who died in 1980, at just 30 years old. Last November her work rocked the art world when a print of Vale Street (1975) sold for $122,000 ($1,00,000 hammer price) at a Sotheby’s Australia (now operating as Smith & Singer) auction. In her short and intense career she focused on figurative compositions that were intensely personal and informative of a life lived in Melbourne in the 70s.

Smith & Singer is exhibiting 26 of the revered photographer’s works in the exhibition Carol Jerrems: Portrait of a Decade, at 14-16 Collins Street Melbourne, 27 February to 20 March 2020, and then 26 March to 17 April 2020 at 30 Queen Street Woollahra, Sydney.

All works courtesy Ken Jerrems and estate of Lance Jerrems. Supplied by Smith & Singer Fine Art

Main image: Vale Street (1975), Carol Jerrems’ most famous image, was orchestrated over a number of hours in a St Kilda backyard. An aspiring actress, 21-year-old Catriona Brown, is flanked by two of Jerrems’ sharpie students, Mark Lean and Jon Bourke from Heidelberg Technical school. They had not met beforehand yet Jerrems elicits ease by placing her subjects within close proximity, using natural light with no reflectors. Photograph: Carol Jerrems

  • Carol Jerrems’ Boys (1973), Melbourne, Victoria. ‘Then Carol went into the world – innocent, vulnerable and yet with a camera firmly pointed at the heart of things. She had to experience everything and feel things deeply before she could record them. She lived to the fullest then withdrew into her own world, hiding in her darkroom – in the darkness of herself.’ Paul Cox, 1990.
    CAROL JERREMS Boys (1973)

  • Carol Jerrems’ Self Portrait, Kingsgate Hyatt Hotel Room (1973), Kings Cross, Sydney, New South Wales.
    Carol Jerrems’ Self Portrait

  • Carol Jerrems’ Vale Street (1975), St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria.
    Carol Jerrems’ 1949-1980 Vale Street (1975) 1975, St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria

  • Carol Jerrems’ Ralph Gibson, John Williams and Bill Heimerman (1977), Sydney, New South Wales. ‘As Jerrems’ photographic project matured the collaboration between her and her subjects became all-important. The subjects of the photographs step forward in the frame to confront us, implicating us in the act of looking.’ Helen Ennis, 1990
    CAROL JERREMS Ralph Gibson, John Williams and Bill Heimerman (1977)

  • Carol Jerrems’ Cronulla (1977), Cronulla, Sydney, New South Wales. ‘These pictures are portraits, I love people, and am trying to communicate something of what I see and feel. Sharing. Please look at them, I have printed and arranged them, for you. With love, Carol Jerrems, 1975.’
    CAROL JERREMS Cronulla (1977)

  • Carol Jerrems’ Flying Dog (1973), Surry Hills, Sydney, New South Wales. ‘In Ridge Street, Surry Hills, where a boy was playing ball with his dog, the photographer was walking to the milk-bar; the Greek man in that shop had a telephone. She photographed the dog as it moved in different directions, trying to catch the ball in mid air. Fantastic! Haydn Keenan parks his car around the corner. Sydney is like that, you know?’ Carrol Jerrems, 1974.
    CAROL JERREMS Flying Dog 1973, Surry Hills, Sydney, New South Wales.

  • Carol Jerrems’ Lynn [Gailey] (1976), Sydney, New South Wales. ‘Portraits are in a sense self-portraits. It is in that moment of assertiveness against the act of being photographed that a paradoxical defencelessness is exposed – a profound understanding arising from Jerrems’ own struggles to communicate that we are all toughing it out – everyone, as she said, separated and isolated. It is perhaps this particular blend of bravado and vulnerability which defines Jerrems’ vision and makes her photography endlessly compelling.’ Anne O’Hehir
    CAROL JERREMS Lynn [Gailey] (1976).

  • Carol Jerrems’ Linda and Chris (Piper) 1976, Sydney, New South Wales. ‘I really like people. I’m not into landscape, that just makes me feel cold. I try to reveal something about people, because they are so separate, so isolated; maybe it’s a way of bringing people together, by showing them photographs of each other, a sort of communication … I don’t want to exploit people. I care about them; I’d like to help them if I could, through my photographs …’ Carol Jerrems.
    CAROL JERREMS Linda and Chris (Piper) 1976

  • Carol Jerrems’ Caroline (1976), Melbourne, Victoria. ‘I never capture the image I am after, but somehow grow to accept what I get.’ Carol Jerrems 1978.
    Carol Jerrems’ Caroline (1976)

  • Carol Jerrems’ Juliet Holding Vale Street (1976), Prahran, Melbourne, Victoria. ‘Vale Street reappears in Juliet Holding Vale Street (1976), photographed in Paul Cox’s garden in Prahran, Melbourne. Juliet Bacskai poses under a vine that mimics the composition of Vale Street … By 1976, Jerrems’ portraits were marked by distinct tonal shifts and shadows.’ Natalie King
    CAROL JERREMS Juliet Holding Vale Street (1976)
Topics