Friday Round Up - 14 August, 2015

This week it's all about the sixth edition of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale which opens in Ballarat, 90 minutes west of Melbourne, on Saturday 22 August. The Festival runs until 20 September and Festival Director Jeff Moorfoot and his team have put together an impressive program. This week Friday Round Up features a selection of the international exhibitions in the Core Program. Next week it's opening night and a preview to the Australians that will be on show.

Festival Feature:

Workshops:

This year in addition to the core program and fringe exhibitions there are a host of workshops too - 15 in total - including Getting Loose with Your Camera a one-day workshop by Sam Harris whose book The Middle of Somewhere has its official Australian launch at the Festival. Visual Storytelling: The Fundamentals of Documentary Photography is a three-day workshop run by Oculi members Dean Sewell and David Maurice Smith - this is a truly fantastic opportunity to learn from two of the most respected and accomplished documentary photographers in Australia. For those who are keen to get their portfolio into shape, Sally Brownbill is holding a one day workshop Editing Images and Building a Portfolio. And there's a Photo Book Making Marathon Workshop with Blurb. Check out the program for the full list of workshops. Check out the festival website for the full workshop program.

Core Program - Selected International Exhibitions

Boryana Katsarova - Freezing

In the series Freezing, Bulgarian photojournalist Boryana Katsarova has created exquisite portraits of commuters peering out through frosted windows during the coldest winter on record in Bulgaria. The series was shot in 2012 in Sofia, during a winter that saw temperatures of minus 20 Celsius and heavy snow storms that crippled the city's transport system and isolated villages. Boryana continues to work on this series while also pursuing projects as a Pulitzer Centre for Crisis Reporting grantee. 

On show at St Patrick’s Community

Thomas Kellner - Genius Loci 

German visual artist, curator and educator Thomas Kellner's interest lies in experimental and conceptual photography. In his career he has developed different pinhole series, photogram work and printings in alternative techniques such as cyanotype, saltpaper and others. Since 2003 Thomas has been working on architectural exteriors and interiors around the world as seen in his exhibition Genius Loci. The buildings, which appear to be broken apart, are designed to evoke the vulnerability of our values and creations. Thomas has exhibited around the world and his work is held in private and public collections.

On show at St Patrick’s Community

Alejandro Chaskielberg - La Creciente









With a background as a photojournalist and DOP, Argentinian photographic artist Alejandro Chaskielberg works with photography "in the border between document and fiction". He's been named one of PDN magazine's 30 new and emerging photographers to watch and is the winner of the POYi award for the best Latin American portrait. His work has been exhibited in Brazil, Argentina, New York, Norway, The Netherlands and Japan.

On show at the Ballarat Mining Exchange

In brief:

China: Pang Xiang Liang - The Drilling Workers

at Ballarat Trades Hall

France: Nicolas Dhervillers - Road Movie

at Art Gallery of Ballarat

Germany: J Scriba - Element_1

at Art Gallery of Ballarat

Friday Round Up - 8 May, 2015

This week Friday Round Up features the last of this year's Head On Photo Festival coverage with the opening of Timeframes, an exhibition by two German photographers - Daniel Schumann and Thomas Kellner, and group show, 4, featuring Australian photographers Paul Blackmore, Murray Fredericks, Gary Heery and New Zealander Derek Henderson. Plus in Melbourne Silk Road Stories opens and Peta Clancy shows her series Puncture.

Photos of the Week: 

Australian photojournalist Daniel Berehulak, who recently won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage on the Ebola crisis, is in Nepal covering the tragic aftermath of the earthquake that has devastated this nation. Berehulak continues to produce outstanding work that is insightful, intelligent and compassionate. Images (C) Daniel Berehulak for the New York Times. 

Head On Photo Festival:

Last weekend I attended the opening of the Head On Photo Festival in Sydney and interviewed a host of fantastic photographers for stories that will be published internationally in various magazines. In the coming weeks I'll also post some interviews here. This week's post is the last on the actual festival and I want to highlight two shows that opened this week which are definitely worth seeing. If you missed my other picks, see my posts from 30 April and 1 May for a rundown on the International and Australian exhibitions.

Thomas Kellner & Daniel Schumann
Timeframes 

(C) Thomas Kellner


(C) Daniel Schumann

These two German photographers share their visions on the concept of time. Kellner’s work is based in deconstruction and reconstruction, where he takes multiple images of a single building and recreates the perspective presenting an image of a building, usually a well known landmark, that appears to move before our eyes. 

(C) Thomas Kellner

(C) Thomas Kellner

Schumann uses the passage of time to tell the story of those living out their final days in a hospice. The work, ‘Purple Brown Grey White Black – Living While Dying Today,’ gives a deeply personal insight into the final days of these individuals with dignity and compassion. 

(C) Daniel Schumann


(C) Daniel Schumann

(C) Daniel Schumann

Until 31 May
Conny Dietzschold Gallery
99 Crown Street
Darlinghurst
Head On Photo Festival

4
Group Show 

(C) Paul Blackmore

Photographers Paul Blackmore, Murray Fredericks, Gary Heery and Derek Henderson join in this group exhibition, which features work ranging from landscape and portraiture, to documentary and fine art. Some of photographs in this show have never been exhibited before, others are familiar, but all are representative of the great photography being created in this country. 

(C) Paul Blackmore

Blackmore, who works in both the fine art and documentary genres, presents new work shot last summer on Sydney’s beaches (above). Fredericks, known for his epic, surreal landscapes includes two photographs from his Greenland series. Heery, who has worked in the music industry for decades, includes his portrait of a young Madonna, and Henderson presents a selection of B&W and colour landscapes. It's a beautifully executed exhibition.

(C) Murray Fredericks

(C) Murray Fredericks

(C) Gary Heery

(C) Derek Henderson

(C) Derek Henderson

presented by Cohen Handler
114 Brougham Street
Potts Point
Head On Photo Festival 

Exhibitions: Melbourne

Guy Vinciguerra – Silk Road Stories 

Shot over a decade, Western Australian photographer Guy Vinciguerra presents a selection of his works from the series Silk Road Stories shot in Pakistan. 

All images (C) Guy Vinciguerra

Until 30 May
Colour Factory
409/429 Gore Street
Fitzroy

Peta Clancy - Puncture

All images (C) Peta Clancy

As part of the group show "Paper," Melbourne photographic artist Peta Clancy showcases her series Puncture, comprising four large-scale, intimate self-portraits. Clancy’s artistic practice explores themes of ‘transience, temporality, mutability and the corporeal and subjective limits of the human body’. In this series Clancy uses a fine needle to carefully apply thousands of tiny pinpricks through the surface of photographic paper. These markings rupture the surface of her self-portraits to form beautiful embroidered patterns that are visible on the surface of the paper.

Until 12 July
Linden New Art
26 Acland St

St Kilda