Career
After graduation, Mitelman practiced as a freelance photographer specialising in portraiture for magazines including the trendsetting POL , and newspapers, [2] album and book covers, and for theatre and music posters. [3] During her career she has sought out Australia's significant writers, artists and personalities for her subjects, thus creating a valuable pantheon of the country's culture. [4]
One hundred and twenty appear in her 1988 book Faces of Australia was work previously exhibited at The Art Gallery, Prahran , [5] to a lukewarm review from Age reviewer Greg Neville who while conceding that they were "professional and respectable," considered them "commercial portraiture in the sixties style, all grain and contrast, dressed up with just the right dose of Bicentenary sentiment," work that "tells us no more about the famed sitters than we already know, and nothing about the artist. [6] Tom Fantl prefaced his review of the book with the statement that in portraiture "the surface physical features are descriptive but not all telling. It is the personality and psyche which the creative artist must explore, capture and relate. It is the inherent character which the viewer is urged to see, thereby seemingly establishing an understanding, almost a relationship, with the individual portrayed."
He concludes that;
Mitelman's approach is classical and explorative. Classically her sitters look directly into the camera lens, and hence at us, (eg Harry Siedler), thereby drawing us into their space and time. By carefully positioning her subjects, yet making them appear spontaneous we feel watched even as we do the watching. [7]
Terry Lane, with the arrival of the internet nevertheless questions the value of such 'coffee-table' books as Mitelman's, even in the prior age of television, other than as 'time capsules'; "No one ever looks at it, which is a pity because I am in it." [8]
The National Portrait Gallery holds twenty of her photographs [9] including those of Dorothy Hewett, Helen Garner, Judith Wright, Jack Hibberd, [10] Peter Carey, Michael Leunig, Christina Stead, [11] Brett Whiteley, Germaine Greer, Ruby Hunter, Murray Bail, [12] Alan Marshall, Kylie Tennant, Susan Ryan, Ita Buttrose, Max Dupain [13] and Lily Brett. [14] Her depiction of Miss Alesandra [15] won the Gallery’s National Photographic Portrait prize, [16] [17] for which she received $25,000 provided by Visa International. [4] Mitelman says of her approach [18] that;
“taking photographs is a bit like a temporary infatuation, for me, because, I'm not interested in taking awkward pictures of somebody, so it's a bit like...that process when you fall in love with somebody.” [9]
Of Mitelman’s portraits of dogs when displayed at Waverley City Gallery (Monash Gallery of Art), critic Anna Clabburn wrote;
As with American photographer Bill Wegman's much earlier portraits of his pet weimaraners, there's much to be learnt from Mitelman's comic-yet-serious transposition of dogs into human guise. The anthropomorphic quality of her subjects is both inviting and vaguely disturbing, and certainly makes us think more deeply about our relationship with the beasts we so easily call "pets' [19]
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