‘Almost broke my spirit’: The ‘absolute panic’ behind Tamara Dean’s $50,000 prize-winning photo

Photomedia artist and former Sydney Morning Herald news photographer Tamara Dean has entered the Bowness Photography Prize every year since it began in 2006. In 2026, it was finally her time.

Last month she won the $50,000 award with Metamorphosis, an image she took of herself in her custom-built pool studio at home in Cambewarra, south of Sydney. Submerged with a simple piece of flowing yellow cloth, she has created a dramatic, ethereal portrait floating in black space.

Dean has shot many successful underwater series in her pool, yet she says this particular image “almost broke my spirit”. Previously, these works have been shot against photographic backdrops; for this latest series she wanted to try a black background. Despite her creative affinity with water, Dean is an anxious swimmer and often uses her children as models (they are completely comfortable in the water). But the day she wanted to experiment with the yellow cloth she had bought in a local second-hand emporium, the kids were out, and she was home alone, so she steeled herself.

“It was a really hard shoot because I had to set the camera up and set it off, then run up to the pool, jump in, try and swim past the camera a number of times moving this material in a graceful fashion while I’m in an absolute panic because I’m underwater and I’m already scared and no one is home if I get caught up in the material and drown.”

At least the Bowness win makes that stressful day worthwhile. “It feels especially pertinent to have had Metamorphosis recognised given it was such a personal work; and a massive technical challenge that took my career’s worth of development to achieve.”

The beauty and impish quality of Dean’s photographic works can disguise the seriousness underpinning her practice. Environmental issues, including the urgency of climate change, have been constant drivers, professionally and personally.

“My work is my way of contributing to that conversation as it’s my deepest concern,” she says. “But more recently I have had to become less informed. The trauma of witnessing the irreversible damage happening to our environment through human impact is so deeply disturbing I don’t even know how to engage with it any more. I am bereft.”

Dean, who turned 50 in January, has had a game-changing year. Her first major survey show, Tamara Dean: Leave only footprints, showed at Manly Art Gallery; the Art Gallery of NSW exhibited and acquired her work for the first time; and she is working on the visuals for Malthouse Theatre’s new adaptation of Charlotte Wood’s novel Stone Yard Devotional in Melbourne. And her self-portrait work Entanglement is currently on exhibition at the S.H. Ervin Gallery as one of the finalists in the Portia Geach Memorial Award 2026 show.

Just announced is her collaboration with performance artist Samantha Chester on Giant Women, a new immersive installation and performance work centring on the female body. Melding photography, moving image and choreography with live performance, the project will take at least another year to develop, supported by Shark Island Kangaroo Valley which hosts arts residencies near Dean’s home.

But perhaps her biggest leap has been to start painting seriously for her next solo exhibition at Michael Reid Sydney gallery, The Garden. This creative gear change was encouraged by fellow artist Ben Quilty, who lives nearby in the Southern Highlands, when he invited her on a painting expedition to one of his favourite spots on the Wollondilly River. “I found an exciting new way of looking and seeing,” Dean says.

She hasn’t dropped her photomedia practice, but is doing the two in tandem, with the paintings often inspired by the flowers in her photography. In some cases she has painted directly onto her own photos, as a bridge between the two. Metamorphosis was the catalyst for this new series.

“The fabric created these floral, almost painterly forms,” Dean says. “From there The Garden evolved into a broader exploration of flowers, paired forms and femininity.”

Initially, Dean’s painting studio was a small room in her house. Cramped and cluttered with canvasses, it was far from ideal but had one important thing – a door she could shut to take time out from the family.

“At first my kids would come in but the attention I need to give this is so involved,” she says. “It took them a bit of adjustment to realise when I’m painting, I’m sort of inaccessible.”

Her husband has since made room in his shed for her studio. On the first day after moving in, she started 10 new paintings. “I really needed the space to be able to loosen up in the work.”

Dean is excited to reveal this latest creative experiment in public, but for her the response is immaterial. The decision to paint has a simple and unshakeable logic.

For years, she says, whenever people asked “How are you?” she always answered “I’m OK.” Now finally the answer is, “Yeah, I’m really happy. Painting makes me happy.”