Exhbition: Role play - portrait photography October 24, 2007

Photography Gallery, Level 3
Admission free

Portrait photography is a complex and fascinating area of photographic practice that, at its heart, has a dynamic process of collaboration between the sitter, the viewer and the camera operator. In this exhibition, a provocative interchange between historical and contemporary photography has been created to suggest how photographers work to construct, question or reflect the notion of ‘role playing’.

Role Play contains three broad thematic groupings, namely allegorical portraiture (H.P Robinson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Cindy Sherman, William Wegman, Rose Farrell and George Parkin); portraits that either typecast or question social roles (August Sander, Edweard Muybridge, Anne Ferran); and theatrical photographs in which the sitter acts a role, (including G.B Poletto’s wardrobe photographs of Ava Gardner in On the Beach).


Adolph de MEYER
French 1868–1946, worked in England (1908–14), United States (1914–1946)
Portrait of the Marchesa Casati 1912
plate from Camera Work August 1912
photogravure
21.7 x 16.2 cm (image); 24.7 x 19.8cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1979


G. B. POLETTO
Italian 1915–88
No title (Ava Gardner in wardrobe still for On the beach: Dwight's cabin) (1957)
gelatin silver photograph
28.0 x 21.9 cm (image); 28.8 x 22.8 cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 2003

Official Website: http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/roleplay/index.html