15 Facts About Carol Jerrems

Carol Jerrems was born on 14 March 1949 at Ivanhoe, Melbourne the third child of Victorian-born parents Eric Alfred Carol Jerrems, an accountant with Edward Trenchard and Co.

Carol Jerrems attended Ivanhoe Primary School and Heidelberg High School and went on to complete a Diploma of Art and Design, majoring in photography, in the newly established photography course at Prahran Technical School, where she was taught by cinematographer Paul Cox and acted in his film Skin Deep.

Carol Jerrems remained close to Paul Cox, appearing in his The Journey, and to fellow Prahran College ex-students Ian Macrae and Robert Ashton, with whom she shared 11 Mozart Street, St Kilda.

Carol Jerrems appears in Ian Macrae's experimental stop-frame short Fly Wrinklys Fly which he made for Channel 9.

When, in 1973, Carol Jerrems started teaching at Heidelberg Technical School, she befriended its disadvantaged students who lived in the 1956 Olympic Village housing commission flats, some of whom were members of sharpie gangs.

Carol Jerrems photographed and filmed them in nearby Banyule Reserve at Viewbank on the Yarra River.

Carol Jerrems made a friend of 62-year-old Henry Talbot, and posed for him.

Carol Jerrems published A Book About Australian Women prompted by the upcoming International Women's Year of 1975, exhibiting 32 works-in-progress from this series at Brummels.

In 1975, Carol Jerrems moved to Sydney to live with her boyfriend, filmmaker Esben Storm.

In Sydney, Carol Jerrems exhibited solo and conducted workshops at the ACP.

Carol Jerrems later showed at Hogarth Galleries, then with Christine Godden, Christine Cornish and Jenny Aitken in Four Australian Women, at the Photographers' Gallery in South Yarra, Melbourne, and with Roderick McNicol at Pentax Brummels Gallery of Photography.

Carol Jerrems died 21 February 1980 at The Alfred Hospital.

Carol Jerrems photographed in a subjective manner, responding interactively with her subject and their environment.

Carol Jerrems always used a 35mm Pentax Spotmatic single-lens reflex camera with a standard f1.4 50mm lens, eschewing wide or telephoto lenses, and used black and white film, usually Kodak Tri-X, which she processed and printed herself in a series of home and college darkrooms, and colour only rarely.

Carol Jerrems was very meticulous technically so even her proof sheets were a work of art.