The portrait is of Betty Churcher. It is a colour photograph, an inkjet print on paper, measuring approximately 65 centimetres tall by 55 centimetres wide. It was made by Adam Knott in 2008.
Betty’s smiling face fills the photograph. She looks towards us with chin tilted slightly up in front of a plain pale-grey background. Betty is positioned so close in the portrait the tip of her head is cropped off, along with the sides of her shoulders and arms, and at mid chest.
Betty has grey hair with darker threads and silver highlights running through it. A short fringe parts around either side of her face, the hair cut to gradually follow the curve of her cheeks and jaw where it ends.
The light in the image is directed from above and falls over her forehead, nose, and cheeks, smoothing, and washing out the colour. Her skin is bright and glows with a subtle warm tan. The skin on her forehead is slightly lined above straight tapering eyebrows, dark at their inner points and becoming lighter as they thin at their outer edges.
Laughter lines radiate from the outer corners of her eyes which are almost closed from her smile. The irises appear black with a spark of light reflecting off each.
Betty’s nose is straight and broad at the tip. She has high smooth round cheekbones, accentuated above her broadly smiling mouth. Her red lips are drawn back from two parted rows of teeth, even and white. Her jaw is well defined, the skin creased by vertical lines, and she has a rounded chin.
She wears a black top, the collar positioned high near the back of her neck, coming down into a low ‘v’ in front, revealing a décolletage of mottled tanned skin.
Betty’s hands are in the lower foreground of the photograph, her skin bronzed and speckled. The nails on both hands are of different lengths and unvarnished. She holds her right hand up, almost to her chin, the four fingers in a curved fan. Three fingers of her left hand are lower down, cropped by the bottom edge of the image. Betty loosely holds a pair of glasses, fine streaks of light reflecting off their frames.
Audio description script written and voiced by Lucinda Shawcross
