Sue Ford

Her photographs and eclectic practice was displayed in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2014 where she was also included in the 2025 Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light.

• Name — Sue Ford • Birth Name — Susanne Helene Winslow • Born — 19 March 1943 • Birthplace — St Kilda, Victoria, Australia • Died — 6 November 2009 • Place of death — Balaclava, Victoria, Australia • Occupation — Photographer

Sue Ford was born Susanne Helene Winslow on 19 March 1943, in St Kilda, Melbourne. The earliest photographs are from when Ford was first introduced to the camera. Ford was given her first camera in her late teens to take with her on a family holiday to Europe. It was on her return in 1961 that Ford found employment as a delivery girl for Sutcliffe photographers in Melbourne and working as a darkroom assistant. Ford was one of two female to commence photographic studies in the newly established Certificate of Photography course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1960, or 1961, but completed only the first year of a three-year course. In 1973 she was awarded an Ilford Scholarship that funded her postgraduate study at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne.

Ford was active as a founding member of Reel Women feminist filmmakers. Ford was a member of other feminist film co-operatives over her career, including: the Feminist Film Workers collective (1970s and 1980s) and the Women’s Film Unit in 1985.

Ford moved to the Pughs' artists' colony Dunmoochin in Cottles Bridge for a brief period, then to Laughing Waters Road, Eltham with her spouse Gordon Ford. Their first home was destroyed by bushfire, and they then moved to Pitt Street in Eltham and built a mud brick studio there including a darkroom, they also conducted a short lived child portraiture business at the same time as working for Eltham Film Productions. In 1967 her daughter Emma Ford was born. Then in 1968, her son Ben Ford was born. In 1970, Gordon built a new mud brick house for the family at Laughing Waters Road where they moved in 1972. In 1975 Ford moved to Sydney, but travelled regularly back to Melbourne. In 1980, they returned to Carlton North, Melbourne. In 1982, Ford suffered a serious horse riding accident that resulted in a back injury and could not photograph for some time so recommenced painting. Living in Williamstown from 1983 to 1985, Victoria. Melbourne. Ford travelled each winter to Byron Bay, in New South Wales, making many friends and working on art projects. Ford died in 2009 in her Balaclava home on 6 November, surrounded by her family and friends. In 2010, the Sue Ford archive was established.

• 1969 Suburban Series, collaged photographs • 1971 Metamorphoses; Hawthorn City Art Gallery, Yellow House, Sydney • 1974 Time Series 1, National Gallery of Victoria • 1974 Time Series Brummels Gallery, Melbourne • 1975, 16 July–16 August: Time Series II, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney • 1982 The Photobook of Women, Art Gallery of New South Wales; • 1982 Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne • 1984 Watercolours, Watters Gallery, Sydney • 1988 A Sixtieth of a Second, National Gallery of Victoria; Australian • 1988, to 15 June: A Sixtieth of a Second-Portraits of Women 1961–1981. Australian Centre for Photography • 1989 A Different Landscape, Melbourne Contemporary Art Gallery • 1989 The Witch's Letter, Australian National Gallery, Canberra • 1994 Time Surfaces: Colour Laser Prints by Sue Ford. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne • 1995 Watter's Gallery Sydney • 1995 Monash University Gallery, Melbourne • 1997 Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney • 1998 Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane • 1999 Somewhere in France 1917. Watters Gallery, Sydney • 1999 Parliament House, Canberra • 1999 Van Diemans Land to Video Land: An Exhibition of Colour Laser Prints, and Paintings by Sue Ford • 2003 ARC ONE-Span, Melbourne • 2004 Watters Gallery, Sydney

• 1974 Four Photographers, Abraxas Gallery, Canberra • 1975 Three Women Photographers, Ford with Micky Allan and Virginia Coventry. Ewing and George Paton Gallery, Melbourne • 1975 Snapshots, Australian Centre for Photography • 1976 A Survey of Post-Object Art in Australia, Experimental Art Foun-dation, Adelaide • Three Photographers, Abraxas Gallery; Australian Centre for Photography • Modern Australian Photographs, National Gallery of Victoria • 1980 Self-Portrait/Self-Image, Victorian College of the Arts Gallery, Melbourne and touring • 1981 Ten Years, George Paton Gallery, Melbourne • 1982 Sydney Biennale: European Dialogue, Art Gallery of New South Wales • 1983 Continuum 83, Tokyo • 1983 A Decade of Australian Photography, 1972-1982, Australian National Gallery • 1987 Living in the Seventies - Australian Photography, Australian National Gallery • 1987 The Thousand Mile Stare, Victorian Centre for Photography, Melbourne and tour • 1988 Shades of Light, Photography and Australia, 1839-1988, Australian National Gallery • 1988 Interventions, The Performance Space, Sydney • 1993 From the Empire's End: Nine Australian and Spanish Photographers, Bathurst Regional Gallery • 1994 Pictograms: Aspects of Contemporary Photographic Practice. Touring Exhibition throughout Australia • 1995 Watter's Gallery, Sydney • 1995 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra • 1995 Museum of the Northern Territory, Darwin • Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane • 1998 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne • 1998 Monash University Gallery of Art, Melbourne • 1999 Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane • 1999 Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne • 2000 National Portrait Gallery, Canberra • 2000 Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney • 2002 Fieldwork: Australia Art 1968–2002, NGV, Melbourne

• 2017, 30 September–12 November: An unorthodox flow of images. Curators: Naomi Cass and Pippa Milne, Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Melbourne • 2025 Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light. NGV, Melbourne

Writing in 1990 Janine Burke considered how Sue Ford's series Time (1981), My Faces (1975) and Boyfriends (1975) evidence change: The Time series compares the effects of age on the faces of Ford's friends: three shots taken over a number of years are placed in sequence. Love and work, pain and hope, haircuts and wrinkles have made their mark transforming, in some cases quite astonishingly, the features. Abigail 's passage from youth to maturity has the quality of a private meditation, from the dreamy young girl to the woman strong with self awareness. Her still, symmetrical head becomes an icon of change and acceptance. Burke finds in the self-portrait series My Faces a "passionate attention and dispassionate use of image: the photographs tell, in narrative fashion, Ford's psychological history, etched on her face for all to see. They are as honest as one can ever be about oneself," while Boyfriends, she considers a poignant and funny revelation.

Documentation of Sue Ford's work can be found at the Women's Art Register.