Leading photographer Dreyfus updates emotive portrait series of 14 boys

The show is a featured exhibition with the Head On Photo Festival and will run from May 1 through May 26.

Photographer Ella Dreyfus' exhibition It features a series of portraits of 14 boys, each captured at ages 11, 18 and 25.

An exhibit last featuring the boys was shown in 2012 with two portraits of each boy. Now, the show has updated images of them at age 25.

Dreyfus' has experience in this subject area. Her most famous series, Age and Consent, was shown widely. It made a strong impression in contemporary culture for its approach to the ageing body, illness, mortality and the invisibility of older people.

Among the portraits is William Cook. Like all of the others, he was on the same Sydney soccer team as Dreyfus' son when the series started. He is now a doctor at Wyong Hospital.

Interviewed on ABC Radio in 2012 after the second series, Cook said, "It's all about the aesthetic. I can imagine looking back in 30 years, fascinated by the progression, thinking about who I was then."

In a statement prepared for the exhibition's catalogue, noted psychologist Steve Biddulph says, in part: "Enjoy these photographs. Open your heart to them. We are all on this journey of life, a time-lapse miracle of unfolding; and pausing to appreciate theirs can add poignancy to your own".

Dr Ella Dreyfus is a senior lecturer and head of public programs at the National Art School in Sydney.

Dreyfus and academic Catharine Lumby will officially open the show on Saturday, May 4, at 2pm at the gallery. Dreyfus will give an artist's talk, while Lumby, a professor in the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, will give a guest address.

Watt Space Gallery is also showing Beyond The Binary, also part of Head On Photo Festival, May 1-26. The show features artists experimenting with gender and its social construction through photography.