Vale Street

Carol Jerrems’s images, which embody aspects of the social, sexual and cultural politics of Australia in the 1970s, are a product of her uniquely personal documentary style of photography.  She mainly photographed people known to her – family, friends, lovers and students – who willingly participated in the process.

Vale Street, 1975, was the result of Jerrems bringing together a group of disparate people, with the aim of photographing the chemistry or tension that developed between them over time. She invited two of her ‘sharpie’ students from Melbourne’s Heidelberg Technical College to be photographed with her friend, the aspiring actress Catriona Brown. Jerrems took photographs throughout the day, starting out at one house in St Kilda (Mozart Street) and later moving to another in the same suburb (Vale Street). She was in search of some indefinable quality and, in the late afternoon, when the participants felt more relaxed in each other’s company, she suggested that they remove their tops. From that point Jerrems could see what she was searching for and captured this image of female empowerment.

Julie Robinson, Senior Curator Prints, Drawings and Photographs.