Nude, with cat

Sophie Cunningham August 12

You may think you haven’t heard of Carol Jerrems but if you go to the current photographic exhibition at Heide you will realise that several of her images have become so iconic that you know them well. Her former teacher, the filmmaker Paul Cox, launched the exhibition last Tuesday night.

Most famously, Jerrems took a series of photos of sharpie boys in Heidelberg, Melbourne in the mid-seventies. Her photo, Vale Street, 1975, is a particularly memorable image, and was considered an important moment in Australian photography. Commenting on the way in which Jerrems' photos are half-staged, half-spontaneous – Helen Ennis, former curator of photography at the National Gallery of Australia has said, ‘Jerrems does not presume that she is outside the event without influence on it’. The result is a kind of saturated realism and a defused eroticism – though whether the latter is to do with naked bodies, repressed violence, youth or the absolute ‘thereness’ of the subjects it’s hard to say.

It wasn’t easy work. Jerrems once said, ‘I have myself only narrowly escaped rape but was bashed over the head by the main actor while driving my car, which had just been dented by the rival gang with sticks. They steal my money and cigarettes when I’m not looking, but I refuse to be deterred.’

Jerrems work moved from the outer suburbs of Melbourne to the inner ones of Sydney and many of her photos were taken in Redfern. Here’s her friend Michael Edols (quoted by Peter Wilmoth) on working with her. ‘I remember watching Carol in the middle of this room and she turned her camera on this young man and photographed him.’ The man grabbed at Jerrems and tore off her necklace while Edols dragged her out of the pub and into the car. ‘On the way out,’ Edols says, ‘I got whacked in the chest and cracked two ribs. We had every window of the car totally smashed in, including the headlights.’

Not all her work is so confrontational. There are many photos of friends lying, or standing, around naked. She was bisexual and you can see that in the atmosphere she creates with both her male and female subjects. She spent time back stage with Skyhooks and there is a terrific shot of a youthful Red Symons, putting on his war paint. She also seemed to have a thing for cats – as any thinking woman would – and I just adored the photos of two naked women standing in an underpass, holding a large tabby cat. And yes, I do concede the truth of Robert Corr’s ironic comment on twitter that Jerrems ‘invented’ the unhappy hipster. Carol was only thirty when she died in 1980. Her dying is included in the exhibition: she documented the violence of the operations she endured as she battled cancer.

Jerrem’s work evokes a powerful nostalgia if you were alive in the Seventies. And if you weren’t? Well, I’d be interested to know. Perhaps you’d agree with me that, thirty years after the event it’s almost as if the photos are from another universe.

(This documentary, Girl in a Mirror, was made about Jerrems in 2005).

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