There’s a certain vulnerability to this year’s National Photographic Portrait Prize. Gentle photographs of pregnant women, asylum seekers, mourning widows, autistic twins, young boys primed for their first shave.
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“I wonder what vulnerability means these days,” says Dr Christopher Chapman, senior curator at the National Portrait Gallery and one of this year’s three judges.
Along with Anne O'Hehir, curator of photography at the National Gallery of Australia, and Melbourne-based photographer Hoda Afshar, who won the NPPP in 2015, Chapman’s had the enviable task of whittling down the 3000-odd entries to the final 40.
“Vulnerability is a word that gets used quite a lot, maybe there's something of an acceptance of humanness, of this is who I am and I'm letting you see something of me.
“That's maybe a sense of privacy and sharing that.”
Chapman agrees it’s an intimate collection, for a couple of reasons.
There is some mild nudity. Elizabeth Looker’s A calm so deep, shows Dorotea wearing a sheer dress; As the world falls down #2, by Lilli Waters, a woman’s breasts are revealed behind a dark cape; Shea Kirk’s Callan Bradley Hales (left and right view) is a stereoscopic pair with an element of voyeurism; Greta in her kitchen, 36 weeks, is Alana Holmberg's reflection of a pregnant woman in all her glory. Holmberg's portrait was named as the winner of the NPPP on February 22.
But it’s much more than that. The most revealing photographs expose something of the person in the portrait.
“It’s revealing not only in the sense of revealing the physical body but also something in the way the person is looking at the photographer and, through them, us as well.”
Max Mason-Hubers, in Abdullah in his room, has captured a young man, Abdullah Qaiser, who came from Pakistan to study. He was bashed and racially abused at university but agreed to be photographed in his room, bandages covering the remains of his nose.
Dayannah, a proud young Gomeroi/Kamilaroi woman from Moree, sits in her living room, hiding behind a sequinned cushion. Photographer Raphaela Rosella says Dayannah has a story, a story of pain and triumph, a story that she will share in her own time. It’s partly revealed in her portrait, a glimmer of sunshine illuminating her face.
“There's a real sense of trust that comes through between the person in the photograph and the photographer, says Chapman.
“By that I mean there's a real sense of people revealing themselves to the photographer, an unguardedness.
“This year, as judges, we were talking and thinking about what is the relationship between the photographer and the subject and what is the dynamic between those two people?
“Is there an inequality of power? Is the photographer in a powerful position? Is there a sense of intimacy?
“We were quite interested to maintain an awareness of what that relationship might be as far as we could tell from the image itself.”
A couple of the portraits this year detach themselves from the subject in a way. In Celia inside a watchtower, Wouter Van de Voorde hides his wife away inside a watchtower in the Belgian countryside, her face peeking out.
In Lost, Maria, a proud Italian woman, a widow, is dressed in mourning black, but hidden away in a misty forest.
In one of the most joyous photographs, Alex Vaughn captures Beccie and Steve and their 11 children, who left rural Tasmania behind to take to the high seas on their 13-metre boat and full-time home, the Sumbawa. Three-day-old baby girl Squeak, on her mother’s breast, is the first of the siblings to be born on the boat. It’s chaotic, as children swing from ropes, hair blowing in the wind, but a photograph full of love.
“A photograph can have something that reaches out and grabs you,” says Chapman.
“I’ve been thinking about the way we rely on photographs, particularly of people, to make sense of the world around us.
“There's something that we identify with in that photograph, as someone we might see an aspect of ourselves, or someone we might know.
“On the one hand that's quite a personal thing but also there can be a photograph that can convey something that is essential about our humanness, if you like.
“It's in our nature to look for those things too, to create a sense of meaningfulness in images around us, in the world around us.”
The National Photographic Portrait Prize runs at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, until April 7.
