JERREMS, Carol and Virginia FRASER

A Book about Australian Women. [Photographs by Carol Jerrems. Text edited by Virginia Fraser (cover subtitle)]

Melbourne, Outback Press, 1974.

Quarto, 144 pages with 131 illustrations (including the cover illustrations).

Pictorial card covers lightly rubbed at the extremities and a little bumped at the top corners (impacting unobtrusively on the textblock); small tape stain on the plain verso of the front cover (where the publisher's small complimentary 'review copy' slip was originally attached - now loosely inserted); overall, an excellent copy.

The National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, posted the following observations (on 7 December 2024) in advance of its exhibition 'Carol Jerrems: Portraits': 'In 1974, on the eve of the United Nations' International Women's Year, Carol Jerrems and writer Virginia Fraser published "A book about Australian women". This earnest and timely collaboration was conceived as a "collective portrait" of Australian women, and captures a significant period of change and activism.

The book was launched by the very first Women's Advisor to an Australian Federal Government, Elizabeth Reid, which drew what might otherwise have been a niche cultural object into mainstream discourse.

It remains one of the most important photobooks made in Australia'.

The introductory comments by Carol Jerrems in the book are worth quoting in full: 'The photographs are mostly portraits of artists ... painters, sculptors, writers, poets, filmakers [sic], printmakers, photographers, designers, dancers, musicians, actresses and strippers. Others include women's liberationists, Aboriginal spokeswomen, activists, revolutionaries, teachers, students, drop-outs, mothers, prostitutes, lesbians and friends.

Each portrait is honest. Some are extended in the form of a sequence, with between four and sixteen images, which like an individual photograph reads as a "whole"; the interrelated "parts" flow from left to right.

The women are not intended as an elitist minority group, like a who's who; some are well known, others are not; each is of equal importance.

It is difficult to exist as an artist, being almost impossible to live off one's "art" alone. It is more difficult for a woman. And if her tool of creative expression is a camera, there is yet another struggle because photography is not fully recognised as being an art form in Australia.

There is so much beauty around us if only we could take the time to open our eyes and perceive it. And then share it. Love is the key word'.

Carol Jerrems (1949-1980) died of illness shortly before her 31st birthday.

Item #145530

Price (AUD): $1,500.00
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