Place made
Darlinghurst, New South Wales
Medium
gelatin-silver photograph
Dimensions
22.8 x 15.2 cm (image)
25.2 x 20.2 cm (sheet)
Credit line
South Australian Government Grant 2009
Accession number
20093Ph13
Signature and date
Signed and dated verso, bot.c., pencil "... Robert McFarlane/ ... 1978".
Provenance
Robert McFarlane, Adelaide
Media category
Photograph
Collection area
Australian photographs
Copyright
Courtesy Robert McFarlane and Josef Lebovic Gallery, Sydney
  • 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

     

  • Robert McFarlane: In Memory [display]

    Art Gallery of South Australia, 28 July 2023 – 17 April 2024
  • Public Image, Private Lives: Family, Friends and Self in Photography

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