Category: Women’s Fiction

Get ready to be Starstruck

A shout out to movie buffs, portrait photographers, and anyone interested in Australian cinema. The Starstruck exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra ends on 4 March, 2018. Featuring images drawn primarily from the archives of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Starstruck was developed jointly by NFSA and National Portrait Gallery curators. I had a role in it, too. I was Editor of the exhibition labels and the book of the exhibition. I love the portrait of Abbie Cornish on the front cover of the book (pictured below) shot by Matt Nettheim. If you make it to the exhibition you’ll see images that shed light on over 100 years of Australian cinema history. From 1930s casting books, to portraits from the talkies, to iconic images of actors taken during the filming of classics such as Breaker Morant, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Puberty Blues and Strictly Ballroom, to name just a few.

The latest edition of Portrait magazine, published by the National Portrait Gallery, features an article on black+white magazine. Article author and Assistant Curator of the Gallery, Penny Grist, recalls the impact the magazine had on her as a student. In the article she talks to some of the magazine’s contributing photographers, and the celebrities they shot. Given the magazine was such a large part of my life for so many years, I felt it would be remiss of me not to mention the article. Although black+white is no longer with us, Grist’s article proves it’s not forgotten. The printed copies may be becoming rarer, but the portraits within its pages live on as a record of the spirit and times of the mid-90s and early noughties.