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'In one of her many essays, Charmian Clift writes of the melancholic experience of feeling like a photograph. She has been asked to address a group of students at Wollongong High School, a school she had attended, and in preparing her speech she turns to a photograph that appears in the school's fiftieth-anniversary commemorative booklet. The photograph depicts a class from Clift's time at the school, 'formally posed with the boys lined up behind the girls and their hands resting on the girls' shoulders' ('On Turning slightly Sepia', p. 48 (see References below)), and as photographs do it evokes in Clift's memory small details that are not evidenced in the image itself: 'I can still see one of those girls arched in a perfect swallow dive, and remember precisely a collar of little pearl buttons on a blue crepe dress that another of them wore to an end-of-term dance that year'(48). The photograph also prompts Clift to consider how different her teenage circumstances were from those of the students she is to speak to, their faces shining with the confidence that faith in the goodness of the future affords. Before those faces now momentarily turned to her, she thinks of herself as the past, and wonders, 'if they realized that standing up before them I knew myself to be curling at the edges and turning slightly sepia' (51).' (Publication abstract)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
- Clean Straw for Nothing : A Novel 1969 single work novel
- George Johnston : A Biography 1986 single work biography
- Mermaid Singing 1956 single work autobiography
- In Search of Charmian's Island 1972 single work biography
- The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift 2001 single work biography
- A Cartload of Clay : A Novel 1971 single work novel
- On Turning Slightly Sepia 1970 single work prose
- Peel Me a Lotus 1959 single work autobiography
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Hydra,
Greek islands,
cGreece,cWestern Europe, Europe,