Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up

April 22, 2016

Friday Round Up - 22nd April, 2016

This week on Friday Round Up a sneak peek at this year's Head On Photo Festival and the Pulitzer Prize for Photography winners. Next week Friday Round Up will be live from Head On's opening night in Sydney.

Farewell Prince
I woke this morning to the news that one of the greatest musical talents of my generation was dead at 57. Shocked and saddened at his untimely demise, I want to acknowledge his passing here. Losing David Bowie and now Prince... I began my career as a music journalist and he was one of my favourites. I still have his vinyl albums...rock on.

Festival:
Head On Photo - Sydney

Australia's largest photography festival, Head On, opens next week in Sydney for a month-long celebration of photography in all its forms. Annual photographic festivals face the challenge of keeping it fresh and programming events and exhibitions that will appeal to loyal followers and also attract newcomers. This year the programme features an eclectic and engaging collection of exhibitions that reinforces the capacity of photography to peel back the layers of human complexity, to transport us to new worlds, to reveal difficult truths and hidden stories as well as to entertain.

Here's a sneak peek at what's in store:

Swiss visual artist Catherine Leutenegger’s ‘Kodak City’ is an anthology that reveals what remains of Kodak as a business and looks at the impact the company’s decline has had on the inhabitants of Rochester, where Kodak’s headquarters was situated for more than a century.

1% -Privilege in a Time of Global Inequality, curated by Myles Little, a photo editor with TIME magazine, which features around 30 images, by various photographers, that define the upper echelons of wealth.

Canadian-born, Perth-based photographer Mark Lehn's photo essay of the Bajau Laut nomads, known as the ‘sea gypsies’, captures this group that lives a stateless existence in boat dwellings in the Sabah region of Borneo.

Three Australian female photographers - Raphaela Rosella, Dutch-born Ingetje Tadros and Kerry Payne Stailey - who are all doing really interesting documentary-based work and tackling highly emotive subjects, have exhibitions too.

Australian landscape photographers Paul Hoelen, Scott McCook and Sheldon Pettit take an aerial view to highlight the environmental impact of mining practices in Australia. These works look like abstract art on first viewing and are visually stunning, but their underlying message is clear, as is the ecological devastation.

There is host of umbrella exhibitions too including two Melbourne photographers whose shows are definitely worth checking out:

Nicola Dracoulis' Living in the Middle of Hackney

Living in the Middle of Hackney documents the lives of five young people in one of London’s most marginalised suburbs. This series shot in 2015 follows on from Nicola's original 2008 commission to create a series of portraits of teenagers deemed ‘at risk of exclusion’ by virtue of their demographic. A lot has changed in Hackney in the ensuing eight years and Nicola found a suburb in the midst of gentrification creating an even greater gulf for those on the margins.

Nathan "Natti" Miller's Notes from the Mississippi Delta

Natti describes this series as “visual notes of a traveller with a camera passing through”. What he doesn’t add is that this traveller has a highly developed eye and his visual rendering of the Mississippi Delta is rich in textural notes and emotions that encapsulate the essence of the blues.

To find out more visit Head On here

Pulitzer Prize 2016 - Photography

Four New York Times photographers, together with the news agency Reuters, won this coveted award for their intense coverage of the refugee crisis in Europe. Congratulations to Tyler Hicks, Mauricio Lima, Sergey Ponomarev and Daniel Etter.