Freedom Fighter
Glenn Hunt
- Sitter: Peter Greste
- Medium: Digital print
- Dimensions: 100 x 75 cm
- Representation: The artist represents themselves
- Category: Digital Award
About the artwork and sitter
Imprisoned in Egypt for 400 days, journalist Peter Greste paid a heavy price for doing his job. After a public campaign, Greste was returned to Australia in 2015. An award winning foreign correspondent for 25 years, he now holds the UNESCO Chair in Journalism and Communications at UQ, and advocates for press freedom.
This portrait is starkly illuminating. The carefully positioned, slightly unbalanced figure, off centre and leaning forward, shows both a fragility in the pose, and the weight of the surrounding space.
And although Greste says his prison days were “a struggle over press freedom, and not about anything personal,” the clever lighting in this portrait hints at the many difficulties experienced on a personal level.
About the artist
Glenn Hunt is a multi-disciplinary photographer with a career spanning 30 years. He has won many awards, including the Humanity Awards, Photographer of the Year, Australian Photography Awards and the Brisbane Portrait Prize (digital). He has also been a finalist in the Clayton Utz Art Award, Martin Kantor Portrait Prize, Moran Prize, and Hasselblad Masters. He lives in a converted church on Brisbane’s Northside where he makes many of his portraits.
