Self portrait - AGSA Collection

Carol Jerrems
Australia
1949 – 1980

Self portrait
from the series Hospital
1979
gelatin-silver photograph

Place made: Hobart
Medium: gelatin-silver photograph
Dimensions: 23.9 x 15.8 cm (image)
Credit line: Maurice A. Clarke Bequest Fund 2013
Accession number: 20134Ph86
Signature and date: Not signed. Not dated.
Media category: Photograph
Collection area: Australian Photographs
Copyright: © Estate of Carol Jerrems
Image credit: Photo: AGSA

WALL LABEL: Public Image, Private Lives: Family, Friends and Self in Photography, 2016

In 1979 Jerrems moved to Hobart to teach at the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education. That year she became critically ill and was eventually diagnosed with Budd-Chiari syndrome, a rare condition affecting the liver. She spent several painful and uncertain months in hospital, but continued to take photographs from her hospital ward, including unflinching self-portraits, such as this one, which document her physical decline.

While in hospital she sent her rolls of film to her friend and fellow photographer Roger Scott in Sydney for processing and printing. In late 1979 Jerrems moved back to Melbourne, where she died in February 1980, three weeks before her thirty-first birthday.

Julie Robinson, Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs

Public Image, Private Lives: Family, Friends and Self in Photography

Art Gallery of South Australia, 5 February 2016 – 18 September 2016

Carol Jerrems 1949 – 1980

Carol's hospital room

1979

gelatin-silver photograph

Accession no: 20134Ph85
Carol Jerrems 1949 – 1980

Self portrait

1979

gelatin-silver photograph

Accession no: 20134Ph86