'B', nude, Darlinghurst

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

Robert McFarlane was working as a photojournalist in Sydney when he met Beatrice, the subject of this photograph, in a topless restaurant in Adelaide in 1977. After his lunch Robert gave Bea his card, commenting, ’I would love to photograph you sometime’. It was a chaotic time for Bea, who the following year ended up in Sydney and knocked on the door of Robert’s terrace house in Darlinghurst, which Bea describes as a ’creative mess’. Robert offered her somewhere to stay while she sorted out her life.

This image was captured just after Bea had received a new punk haircut, which she regretted, and she was in the midst of a family crisis. After a shower she had curled up on an armchair and Robert, noticing the light falling on her limbs, quickly took the photograph. Bea said of the moment, ’I trusted Robert. I was comfortable in my body, but highly strung emotionally. In that moment I was fragile, but I’d relaxed into a quiet space’.

Julie Robinson, Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs