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White Drummer Ghost Class

Finalist, MDPA 2015

Charlie Ford

I had my medium format camera to take like a nice portrait of the family and just happened to see Helen in this really natural pose, shutting the gate to keep the dog away from the spit.

Nothing black and white about the Greys

Marriage: a prolonged disaster

A life shared

Wartime romance

Top of their game

Macfarlane Burnet and Patrick White

Larry Clark

Larry Clark's black-and-white documentary images of young outsiders reveal raw feelings. 

Ayman Kaake

This photo is a self portrait. So this is me. So you can see the eye resemblance. So, and this photo is inspired by my friends, my workplace.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2018 winner announced

Finalists have been eagerly awaiting the announcement of the Winner and Highly Commended for the National Photographic Portrait Prize since December. It is our pleasure to announce the Winner for 2018 is Lee Grant for her portrait titled Charlie and Highly Commended has been awarded to Filomena Rizzo for her portrait titled My Olivia.

Maykarran, 2017

Finalist, DPA 2017
Single channel HD digital video using projection

Alwar Balasubramaniam

Born in 1971 in Tamil Nadu, Southern India, Alwar Balasubramaniam's sculptures, prints and installations challenge our perceptions while creating forms for the invisible and the intangible.

Sean Slattery

This is Davide Di Giovanni and he was a principal dancer for the Sydney Dance Company for six or seven years. He got in touch with me to do some video work together and he was just so amazing.

The Parkes

It wasn’t uncommon for the pro-beard fraternity of the mid nineteenth century to cite beards as a sign of wisdom on the grounds that Socrates and other ancient philosophers had worn them.

The 2023 National Photographic Portrait Prize

Shea Kirk’s portrait of friend and fellow-artist Emma Armstrong-Porter has won the 2023 National Photographic Portrait Prize.

Heidi Margocsy

Perrin is an amazing amazing woman, and what I wanted to do with this particular sitting was create something raw and stripped back.

Heather Corrigan

The lovely faces in my photograph are that of my best friends. Some I have only known for a couple of months, others for most of my life. For me, recreating a family portrait with individuals I love was supremely important. I was reconstructing a photo of people I cherish with people I adore.

Liu Wei

Born 1965 in Beijing. Lives and works in Beijing.

Textiles Scientist Voted the People’s Favourite

The black and white portrait of an elderly woman with sidelong glance and irreverent, contemplative smile has taken out the people’s choice award in this year’s National Photographic Portrait Prize.

Zhang Xiaogang

Born 1958, Kunming, Yunnan Province. Lives and works in Beijing.

The Legend of Ruby and Archie

A bond in song

Of Pansy, plastiques and prudes

Near-naked subversion

NPPP 2013 exhibition essay

Joanna Gilmour, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2013 Prize.

Nicholas Paspaley Jnr, 2018

Commissioned with funds provided by Ross Adler AC 2018

Tim Fairfax, 2018

Commissioned with funds provided by The Calvert-Jones Foundation 2018

Krystal Seigerman

The photograph was a brief, candid moment, which unfolded into a portrait. Peter and I were in Silverton, NSW, chatting as our students explored the town. The weak afternoon light suddenly became dramatic and defined, so I asked Peter if I could take his portrait.

Andrew Campbell

An interview with the photographer.

Storytelling

The fourth row of paintings interweave Ngarranggarni, memories, relationships and Country.

The more things change...

Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2017 Prize.

Darren McDonald

The wild balancing act of McDonald’s home décor (is that there as a joke? where do I actually sit down? is this ironic or what? what a lovely photo of Darren and Robin in Europe!) is reflected in his own personality.

2012-13 Acquisition Fund

The Circle of Friends Acquisition Fund for 2012 was dedicated to purchasing a portrait of David Malouf by Rick Amor.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2023

We encourage you to look, to feel, to think, to question and most importantly, to identify and connect.

Donors

Chinese Art

A short overview of modern Chinese art from 1949 to the present.

Sharon Zwi

We were in Gaza shooting a documentary and we had heard about the orphanages and wanted to visit and document some of the children who had lost parents during the wars in Gaza.

Supporters

Pamela See (Xue Mei-Ling)

Born: 1979, Brisbane
Works: Brisbane

Shirley Purdie

Born: 1947, Gilbun – Mabel Downs Station, WA
Works: Warmun, WA

Valerie Kirk

Born: 1957, Dumfriesshire, Scotland
Works: Canberra

Arianne McNaught

An interview with the photographer.

Leah King-Smith

Born: 1957, Gympie, QLD
Works: Brisbane

Feather voted the people’s favourite

The National Portrait Gallery is thrilled to announce that the People’s Choice award for this year’s National Photographic Portrait Prize goes to Natalie Grono from Byron Bay for her photograph Feather and the Goddess Pool 2014.

Memories

The second row of paintings recall stories relating to specific sites, experiences and activities.

Brenton McGeachie

An interview with the photographer.

Terms and conditions

Conditions of entry for the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2015.

Visiting with a school group

Access support for students.

Twenty new portraits marking Portrait Gallery’s twentieth birthday

To celebrate the National Portrait Gallery’s twentieth anniversary as an institution, twenty portraits of outstanding Australian individuals have been commissioned for the permanent collection. This is the largest undertaking for the Gallery’s commissioning program in its twenty-year existence.

Myles Nelson

It was definitely a candid encounter as was the expression on the face. It was constructed insofar as the image was deliberately taken from a distance so as to minimize intrusion and to magnify the effect of the image.

Janet Tavener

Mikala is the eldest of my three daughters. I have photographed her on many an occasion. Needless to say we are both extremely at home with the practice.

Nikki Toole

An interview with the photographer.

About the exhibition

Ken Done

With a mum who was married to a tradie, you’d think it a fair chance that the baby Jesus would have grown up with a dog in the house.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2022

Let’s look closely at the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2022 together! For students and family groups.

Fang Lijun

Born 1963, Handan, Hebei Province China. Lives and works in Beijing.

Davida Allen

Going around a gallery with a child, we point to a painting of a dog and brightly ask ‘What’s that?’ If they don’t say ‘A dog’, we tell them that’s what it is. We don’t say it’s a shape inscribed by an artist that’s popularly understood to signify a dog. That’d only serve to foster a smarty-pants.

Melanie Faith Dove

I had been watching Agnes with intrigue, her face and profile were so mesmerizing. On our final day together I pulled her aside and convinced her that she had such an amazing face that I needed to get a photograph for myself. It was very spontaneous in that I decided quickly how it would best look and shot it in only two frames.

Shen Jiawei

Shen Jiawei was born in China. During the Cultural Revolution he laboured in the Great Northern Wilderness, but even as he worked there, he gained recognition as an artist. 

Jude Rae

Jude Rae’s high reputation rests on her austere, cerebral still lifes of gas canisters, electric jugs and jars, which she groups and rearranges for paintings that catch their difficult curves and reflections. Her self-portrait’s likewise thoughtfully composed.

Jessica Mauboy, 2018

Commissioned with funds provided by Sony Music Entertainment Australia 2018

William Robinson

Unique in the world, perhaps, is a bronze sculpture that fuses the age-old human portrait bronze tradition, and the later genre of the bronze pug figurine: that’d be William Robinson’s Self-portrait with pug.

Andrew Gaze, 2018

Commissioned with funds provided by Trent Birkett 2018

The 1890s to the 1940s

Although the tough, weathered, hard-drinking bushmen of the kind mythologised by writers like Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson are popularly associated with the character of late nineteenth century Australia, it was also a time when alternative ideas about identity began to come into play.

Anna Culliton

Anna Culliton never had a colouring-in book when she was little. Her parents –Tony, a filmmaker, and Stephanie, a painter – wouldn’t let her have one. Instead, they insisted on her drawing her own pictures to colour-in. 

NPPP 2016 exhibition essay

Penny Grist, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2016 Prize.

Fiona McMonagle

Fiona aims to create a dangerous situation with a flood of water on the paper, forcing each work to the point where it can fail, and then rescuing it. 

2023 Annual Appeal

In 2023 the Annual Appeal was focussed on a work by one of Australia's best loved and most successful portrait painters, Judy Cassab AO CBE, depicting model, entrepreneur and deportment icon, June Dally-Watkins OAM.

2022 Annual Appeal

In 2022 the Annual Appeal was focussed on Mayatjara by Robert Fielding, a series of 24 photographs of Elders of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara community.

So Fine

The National Portrait Gallery is pleased to announce its winter exhibition is So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history. It will open to the public from 29 June 2018.

Swimming every day

Dr Christopher Chapman, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2015 Prize.

Noel McKenna

It’s a matter beyond dispute that in the entire history of Australian art, it’s Noel McKenna who’s painted the liveliest rendition of the head of a Chihuahua.

So Fine

Ten women artists explore the possibilities of portraiture as a contemporary art form; and reinterpret and reimagine Australian history in the Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition So Fine: Contemporary women artists make Australian history.

Eko Nugroho

Born and raised in Yogyakarta, Eko Nugroho (b. 1977) entered the art scene at the height of Reformasi.

Skin names

The first row of paintings depict stories relating to kinship, introducing significant women relatives.

Lucy Culliton

Most well-regarded pictures of chickens show them dead. A reliable way to tell if a chicken in a painting is dead is to check if it’s hanging upside down, because unlike, say, cockatoos, chickens don’t practise inversion for enjoyment in life.

Exhibition themes

The four main themes of the exhibition: About face, Body politic, Skin deep, and Self reflex.

Ngarranggarni

The third row of paintings come from Ngarranggarni (Dreaming).

Graeme Drendel

I like talking about Drendel’s pictures as if they expressed dreams of my own.

Annual Appeal

Visiting the National Portrait Gallery

Access support for a general visit to the Gallery.

Nicholas Harding: 28 Portraits

Sarah Engledow looks at three decades of Nicholas Harding's portraiture.

Kristin Headlam

Basil grew into a speckled beauty – a long-legged leaper and an exceptionally vocal dog, with a great register of sounds, ascending in shock value from a whimper to a growl to a bark to a yelp that’s a violation of the ears.

Vivan Sundaram

Born in 1943 in Simla, Vivan Sundaram’s long career has given him opportunities to work in a range of mediums – painting, installation, assemblage, photography, digital media and film.

FX Harsono

FX Harsono was born in 1949, just as the independence of the Indonesian nation was being established.

S Teddy D

S Teddy D was born in Padang, Sumatra in 1970, and studied painting at the Institut Seni Indonesia (Indonesian Institute of Art) in Yogyakarta.

Arcadia: Sound of the sea

One night in the spring of 1970 in an old house in Whale Beach, north of Sydney, John Witzig, Albe Falzon and David Elfick put together the first issue of Tracks, playing Neil Young’s album Harvest over and over again as they pasted up galleys of type.

Everybody, look serious

Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2014 Prize.

Some women you may not know

‘Everybody’s lives are built by so many influences, and for me, it is writers, artists and activists who have influenced how I think about the world.’

Robyn Sweaney

Robyn's parents had two terriers, Wuff and Snuff. In spite of Snuff’s ominous name and a couple of close shaves – once, he jumped out of a moving car, and another time, on a long road trip, he was accidentally left behind at a petrol station – he outlived Wuff.

Nicholas Harding

Over the years the young Nicholas Harding got his hands on various mice and guinea pigs, but they served mainly to illustrate the concept of mortality. 

Rick Amor: 21 Portraits

Sarah Engledow chronicles Rick Amor's work and accomplishments in this extensive essay in conjunction with the exhibition Rick Amor: 21 Portraits.

Faces of war

Lesley Harding, Curator, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne explores Albert Tucker’s experience of World War II, his interests in the intersection between psychology and creativity, and their influence on his portrait making.

Some prime ministers

Sarah Engledow explores the history of the prime ministers and artists featured in the exhibition.