Head On Photo Festival - And the Winners are...

Last night at the opening event for the fifth annual Head On Photo Festival Moshe Rosenzveig, Festival Director, announced the winners in the four prize categories for 2014 - Portrait, Landscape, Mobile and the newly introduced Multimedia. He told the capacity crowd at the Paddington Town Hall that the Head On Awards attracted more that 4000 entries this year from photographers around the world. Alison Stieven-Taylor was a judge for the Landscape Prize this year.

Head On Portrait Prize Winner - Tenth Anniversary
Joe Wigdahl: Family Loss

A portrait of Kirrilee Edwards before her death. Kirrilee suffered a catastrophic brain injury at 12 which required 24 hour care for several years. The image shows her being touched by her incredible parents and 6 brothers and sisters who have all taken part in caring for her.

Head On Landscape Prize Winner
Nick Hannes: Cairo, Egypt



Blank advertisement billboards along the highway in 6th of October City, a satellite city of Cairo, Egypt, 2012. From the series 'The Continuity of Man', a portrait of the Mediterranean region.

Head On Mobile Prize Winner

Clare Bardsley-Smith: Boy vs Wild

Taken during a large storm at Coogee Beach. The boys were fearless, braving the huge waves and diving off one of the large rocks into the surrounding rock pool. 

This year the Festival's major sponsor Olympus provided winners with an impressive range of prizes. Alison Stieven-Taylor has been trialling the O-MD E-M1 and it's fantastic. Light-weight, fast, quiet and incredibly functional, this camera is a winner.

Check out the what the winner of the Head On Portrait Prize receives this year as an example of the terrific prize package: First prize valued at over $10,000 and includes $5,000 cash and a great Olympus Camera Kit worth $4,396 (Olympus OM-D E-M1 body with 12-40mm f2.8 lens, 45mm f1.8 lens, 45mm f1.8 lens, 75mm f1.8 lens), 1 Year subscription to Adobe Creative Suite worth $600 and more!

You can see the finalists in each category at the exhibitions, details below:

Head On Portrait Prize – 40 Finalists
Until 8 June
Paddington Reservoir
251-255 Oxford Street
Paddington

Second Prize Winner:
Richard Wainwright: Life and a suitcase

“We fled Syria across the border into Jordan and could only carry this suitcase with a few clothes and food for the baby. It was cold and dangerous, I cannot explain how awful it’s been for the children” Zeena, 26 and her family struggle to survive in Amman after fleeing Homs following the destruction of their house and bakery.

Third Prize Winner:

Heather Tichowitsch: Vicki 

Gone is my full ample cleavage pride and joy which I once felt defined my womanhood. I now realise I am every bit as much a woman post mastectomy. The new me may be an improvement, but I mourn what I lost, my past identity, what I was, whilst still rejoicing in what I am now.

Head On Landscape Prize – 40 Finalists
Until 8 June
NSW Parliament House, Fountain Court Gallery
6 Macquarie Street
Sydney

Second Prize Winner:

Victor Stepanow: Burnet Forrest

Here, from above, we see a gaggle of crows above a burnt forest, they are as black as the scorched trees below, burnished feathers flickering in the sunlight, their darting movements contrasting with the dead stillness below. Vast landscapes of beautiful, crisp desolation, a view that both delights the eye, and scars the soul.

Third Prize Winner:

Adrian Rohnfelder: Tengger massif in Indonesia

Tengger massif in Indonesia in early morning light with active volcanoes Mount Bromo and Mount Semeru.

NSW Landscape Award Winner:

Peter Solness; Waterscape #2, Reservoir No.2, Centennial Park NSW 2013

I wanted to re-imagine the lost waterways, so I got my light-painting tools to work. In this image, water is being released from the top of the historic Centennial Park No. 2 Reservoir, which was built in 1925 and holds 90 megalitres of water. After 89 years of incarceration these waters now run free!

Head On Mobile Prize – Finalists
Until 7 June
Depot II Gallery
2 Danks Street
Waterloo

Second Prize Winner: 

Andrew Quilty: Burns Victim

In Boost Hospital (run by Medicines Sans Frontiers) in the provincial capital of Helmand Province, Afghanistan, a young girl lies in an observation room after being burnt in an accident with an oil lamp. Heat blankets are used to protect the body from cooling down to dangerously low temperatures as it attempts to deal with the burns.

Third Prize Winner:
Laki Sedaris: Somewhere near Codrington

Head On Multimedia Prize – Finalists
Until 7 June
Brenda May Gallery
2 Danks Street
Waterloo
(No images were available at time of publishing)

Friday Round Up - 16 May, 2014

OUR PREVIEW - THE INTERNATIONALS

This week on Friday Round Up we take a look at some of the international photographers' exhibitions at this year’s Head On Photo Festival in Sydney, which opens today – Erika Diettes, Chris Rainier, Valentina Vannicola, Ilona Stanska, Sara Lewkowicz and the group show Genesis Project.

Panel Discussion:
Do we still photograph with passion?

Join James Dooley, Erika Diettes, Johan Willner, Jonny Lewis, Alison Stieven-Taylor and Sally Brownbill for this panel discussion on whether photography today is conducted with ‘passion’ or whether the focus is on gadgets and technical wizardry. Each panelist will present a selection of images they feel represents passion in photography. It should be a lively, interesting discussion. Open to all, but space is limited.

Sunday 18 May 3pm
Berkelouw Books, 19 Oxford St
Sydney

Interview:
Erika Diettes, Colombia – Sudarios (Shrouds) 

This moving exhibition by Colombian photographic artist, and social anthropologist, Erika Diettes features large-scale portraits printed in black and white on swathes of silk fabric. The portraits are of women who have witnessed unimaginable horror having been forced to watch their loved ones murdered by guerillas and paramilitaries.

Diettes tells me that she purposefully chose to present these portraits on fabric to create “shrouds” which in various religions are used to cover a person after death. The evocation of the shroud in this instance is to convey that while these women are still alive, the trauma they live with is like death.

“That’s the contradiction that I want to portray,” says Diettes. “In these portraits they are remembering the moment of the killings and that was the moment when their lives stopped being as they knew it and started being something else. I think being tortured by witnessing the killing of your son, I mean there is nothing beyond that, you wish you were dead, but you are not and that’s the conflict.”

All images (C) Erika Diettes

In these portraits the majority of women have their eyes closed as they recall the dreadful moments when their lives were irrevocably changed. But there is one striking image where the subject’s eyes are wide open. This image forms the centrepiece of the exhibition as Diettes explains.

“When I was working with this particular woman, when she was telling me her story, she didn’t close her eyes. While I was photographing her I noticed that she was literally staring at what she was telling me. So if you see it as I do, her eyes are open, but it is like she is looking at something beyond. She is like the anchor of the whole exhibition, she is always at the level of the spectator, she is confronting you, but she is beyond you, beyond the pain, and for me it is a very strong portrait”.

For Head On Sudarios is hung in the St. Canice Church in Elizabeth Bay, a brilliant venue for this hauntingly beautiful series of portraits.

Artist Talk: Sunday, 18 May 2014 - 12:00pm

Exhibition until 8 June
St Canice Church
28 Roslyn Street
2011 Elizabeth Bay

Exhibition:
Chris Rainier – People on the Edge

For more than 30 years US photographer Chris Rainier has traversed the globe to capture some of the world’s oldest cultures before their traditions are lost forever in the advance of civilisation. Rainier who shoots predominantly for National Geographic is also part of the National Geographic program “ Last Mile Technology”. In this capacity he works with indigenous groups around the world teaching them how to use digital communications (cameras, computers and social media) to have a voice. These communities, such as the Sherpas who live on the high Tibetan plains, are marginalised by their lack of access to digital technology. Where invited the Last Mile Technology program aids in helping these communities draw attention to issues, such as the melting glaciers in Tibet. 

All images (C) Chris Rainier  

Until 8 June
Paddington Reservoir
251-255 Oxford Street
Paddington


Exhibition:
Valentina Vannicola – Dante’s Inferno


01 - Canto III, Ante-Inferno - The Gates of Hell Valentina Vannicola/OnOff Picture

Italian photo-artist Valentina Vannicola has attracted international attention for her surreal works of art that draw on literary themes, both classical and contemporary. In her series Dante’s Inferno Vannicola has once again enlisted the support of locals in her hometown of Tolfa, north of Rome, to act as characters as she recreates Dante’s journey into hell.

02 - Canto III, Ante-Inferno - Slothful Valentina Vannicola/OnOff Picture

04 - Canto IV, Circle I - Limbo Valentina Vannicola/OnOff Picture

Until 8 June
Istituto Italiano di Cultura
Level 4, 125 York Street
Sydney


Exhibition:
Mary Ellen Mark

US photographer Mary Ellen Mark has been shooting since the 1960s and her passion for documenting humanity in all its forms continues to drive her to create new bodies of work. In her first solo exhibition in Australia Mark presents some of her most iconic images, which she describes as “full of ironies, often humorous and sometimes sad, beautiful and ugly, loving and at times cruel, but always human”. 

All images (C) Mary Ellen Mark

Until 7 June
Stills Gallery
36 Gosbell Street
Paddington

Exhibition:
Ilona Stanska – A Nation Fading Away

Polish photographer Ilona Stanska has created a series of portraits of European Union labour emigrants. Of her artwork, which aims to capture the social, political and cultural issues of these people she says, “My vision is to do something new in a world of photography, that is why I turn my photographic paper the wrong way, print, and then paint my photographs. I call this process prating”.

All images (C) Ilona Stanska

Until 2 June
Wedge Gallery, Kinokuniya Books
Level 2, 500 George Street
Sydney

Exhibition:
Genesis Project – Group Show

(C) Fiona Wolf

“Genesis Project” is a group exhibition that is premised on showcasing “that Eureka moment for working photographers, the moment when they thought ‘I am going to be a photographer when I grow up’ or the photograph that changed their career,” says Festival Director Moshe Rosenzveig, who also has a photo in this show. “This is going to be a really exciting show that gets into the headspace of the photographer”.

19 photographers are featured in Genesis Project, Australians and International Guests including Ben Lowy, Roger Ballen, Murray Fredericks, Chris Rainier, Brian Cassey, David Dare Parker, Fiona Wolf, Jackie Ranken, Katrin Koenning, Martine Perret, Sam Harris, Glenn Campbell, Jon Lewis, Peter Eastway, Craig Golding, John Donegan, Peter Solness, Phil Hillyard, Moshe Rosenzveig. 

(C) Phil Hillyard

20 May to 8 June
M Contemporary
37 Ocean Street
Woollahra

Exhibition:

Sara Lewkowicz – Shane and Maggie: 

An Intimate Look at Domestic Violence

(C) Sara Lewkowicz

US photographer Sara Lewkowicz shot to prominence in the world of photojournalism last year after Donna Ferrato, a photojournalist of international standing and a veteran in the industry, drew attention to Lewkowicz’s images of domestic violence. Ferrato said Lewkowicz’ photographs depicted in her essay “Shane and Maggie” were shocking in the way that good photojournalism should be.

I met Lewkowicz at Visa pour L’Image where she won the 2013 Rémi Ochlik Award and was also a newly appointed member of Getty Images Emerging Talent pool. Since then she’s gone on to win other awards. When we were chatting at Visa she was pragmatic about all the attention and the notion she was a newcomer. Lewkowicz has worked steadily at her craft for years and with good humour assured me she was not “an overnight success”.

Of her project “Shane and Maggie,” she says she was seeking “to portray domestic abuse as a process, as opposed to a single incident, examining how a pattern of abuse develops and eventually crests, as well as its short- and long-term effects on victims, their families, and their abusers”. These are powerful images that deserve our attention.

Until 26 May
Gaffa Creative Precinct
281 Clarence Street
Sydney

Head On Awards - Finalists 

Exhibition Venues
Head On Portrait Prize – 40 Finalists
Until 8 June
Paddington Reservoir
251-255 Oxford Street
Paddington

Head On Landscape Prize – 40 Finalists
Until 8 June
NSW Parliament House, Fountain Court Gallery
6 Macquarie Street
Sydney

Head On Multimedia Prize – Finalists
Until 7 June
Brenda May Gallery
2 Danks Street
Waterloo

Head On Mobile Prize – Finalists
Until 7 June
Depot II Gallery
2 Danks Street
Waterloo

For more information on the above shows and to view the Festival program visit the Head On Photo Festival site here.

Friday Round Up - 9 May, 2014

For the next two weeks Friday Round Up will focus on Australia's largest photographic festival, Head On Photo Festival which officially opens in Sydney on 16th May and runs through until 8th June. In its fifth outing Head On will feature more than 900 photographers across 140 galleries in a celebration of photography in all its forms.

This week Friday Round Up showcases some of the Australian talent, but the programme is incredibly diverse and this selection should be taken as a teaser only for what's in store. Next Friday we will be blogging directly from the Festival's opening weekend. Check out the Festival website here. 

Featured this week are Australians Nicola Dracoulis, Jarrad Seng, James Horan, Leon Gregory, Kerry Pryor, Ludlites Love Light and Olive Cotton and Sally McInerney. Plus there are photo galleries from Alec Dawson and Lisa Garland. Enjoy the feast of photography that lies ahead.

Nicola Dracoulis 
Viver no Meio do Barulho 

(Living in the Middle of the Noise)

Melbourne photographer Nicola Dracoulis’ exploration of nine young people living in Rio’s favelas is gripping. Shot in 2006 and 2013 in this series of portraits Dracoulis revisits the same people seven years apart capturing both the changes in individuals and their habitats. 

Above images (C) Nicola Dracoulis

29 May to 9 June
Gaffa Creative Precinct
281 Clarence Street
Sydney

   

Jarrad Seng
A L L T E R V A T N

A holiday to Iceland in 2013 provided an unexpected opportunity for 26-year-old Perth photographer Jarrad Seng to experiment with aerial landscape photography the outcome of which is a stunning collection of aerial photographs of Icelandic water flows that are reminiscent of abstract paintings.

Above images (C) Jarrad Seng

5-31 May
The Arthouse
275 Pitt Street
Sydney 

James Horan
Irish HorseWhen Irish-born photographer James Horan was growing up in a housing commission estate in Limerick he was warned to keep away from the ‘Travellers’ as the Irish gypsies are known. “Crazy, dangerous people, that you didn’t want to associate with,” he says. But after spending five years documenting the lives of the Travellers Horan has come away not only with a unique view, but also a deep appreciation and concern for these misunderstood and often maligned people.

 

Above images (C) James Horan

21 May to 14 June, 2014
Brenda May Gallery
2 Danks Street
Waterloo

Leon Gregory
At Last - The Seventies

In the early 1970s Sydney photographer Leon Gregory was an aspiring actor who made ends meet by shooting portfolios for his fellow thespians. In his spare time he used his camera in classic street photography style taking photographs of random people that crossed his path. Little did he know that forty years later his eclectic collection of shots of Sydney’s inner city enclaves - Kings Cross, Darlinghurst, Woolloomooloo, The Domain, the City, Glebe and Balmain – taken between 1970-1973 would prove somewhat of a time capsule. 

Above images (C) Leon Gregory

24 May to 13 June
Ginkgo Gallery
166 St Johns Road 

Glebe


Kerry Pryor
Who Lives Here

In Ethiopia almost five million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, famine, war or disease. The children, known as the “Lost Generation” are mostly left to fend for themselves and often end up living on the street. Since 2011 Australian photographer Kerry Pryor has been documenting the lives of children under the care of 'Beyond the Orphanage' and in her exhibition “Who Lives Here” she shares her experiences.

Above images (C) Kerry Pryor

12 May-29 June 

Leichardt Library 

23 Norton Street 

Leichardt

Ludlites Love Light 
Group Show
This exhibition features images taken on “plastic cameras” by various members of the Ludlites photographic collective, an ever-expanding group of enthusiasts who are taken by the unpredictability of images made on plastic cameras.

 

(C) Anika Luzemann

(C) Patrick Boland

Curated by Australian photojournalist and art photographer Steven Siewart, Ludlites Love Light showcases an exciting collection of what can be achieved in lo-fi photography when one combines imagination, a pinch of technical know-how and loads enthusiasm and patience.

The Ludlites’ spokesperson on this occasion is long-time plastic camera enthusiast and photographer Tim Hixson who first came across the plastic model in the 1970s when he was studying photography in the US.

He tells that in those days plastic cameras were “about a dollar each” and that photographing with them was somewhat of a respite from the heavily technical practice that was professional photography in pre-digital days. 

(C) Terry Hixson

Shooting with the plastic cameras was more of an intuitive activity rather than being reliant on the technical aspects of photography. That’s not to say there isn’t any technique involved in shooting with these cameras. Quite the contrary says Hixson.

“There is a lot of technique to using these cameras, but you have to let go of the technical and follow your instinct more. With these cameras you are never guaranteed of the shot you think you’ve got and you never feel like you are in control, but that is part of the whole experience. They have one shutter speed and one fixed F-stop so you have to work around these issues and that makes you more patient. Shooting with these cameras you tend to go into it with an idea rather than creating it later in the computer.”

Hixson says because of the lack of control and the freedom of experimentation that comes with the randomness of the experience, ego falls away and “you realise the humility of it all”.

He explains that with these plastic cameras it’s all about the light and “seeing it and getting it is more difficult on a plastic camera”. But that’s all part of the fun, he insists, and making mistakes, and often discovering something wonderful in those errors, is fundamental to the experience. 

 (C) Craig Proudford

 (C) Heleana Genaus

“For me there is a truthfulness with film, you start from a true perspective and the film binds you to traditional photo values that you then set out to break with the plastic camera which is so simple it’s intriguing,” states Hixson who runs workshops on the topic. “I love seeing people have fun with it. You can’t control it so you have to accept what you get, but you can go back and try again and in that way you are training your mind”.

13-24 May

Workshop: 12noon-4pm Saturday 17 May - open

The Depot Gallery

Danks Street

Waterloo

Mother & Daughter: A Conversation
Sally McInerney and Olive Cotton 

 (C) Olive Cotton

(C) Sally McInerney

At this year’s Head On Photo Festival photographer Sally McInerney will exhibit for the first time alongside her mother Olive Cotton who is regarded as a pioneer of modernist photography in this country.

Cotton’s story is well known in photography circles. Married to renowned photographer Max Dupain in the late 1930s Cotton ran Dupain’s studio while he was at war and in the process honed her skills as a master printer. Their marriage was short-lived and later Cotton married farmer Ross McInerney moving to the country and shelving her darkroom skills for nearly 20 years.

But Cotton never stopped taking photographs with her Rolleiflex camera even if she was unable to make prints. “She wasn’t expected to leave behind her photography when she got married,” says daughter Sally McInerney. “The camera was a feature of our domestic life. Sometimes someone would see something remarkable and mention it to Olive and off she’d go”. 

 (C) Olive Cotton

 (C) Olive Cotton

(C) Sally McInerney

(C) Sally McInerney

Sally caught the photography bug early after being given her first camera at the age of eight. There ensued her lifelong passion, which she says really grew organically and was encouraged by the natural curiosity of her family in the world about them.

“Living in the country certain things were generally always remarked on like cloud formations or the rain or the shapes of trees, especially dead trees,” she says. “In our family it was very normal for someone to say look at this great skeleton leaf or that flocks of birds. Anyone of us - my brother, father, mother or I - would comment on something and the rest of us would be interested. There was such a lot around our little old house, such a lot to look at outside, and that was interesting to us all.”

The McInerney’s worked a subsistence farm about 25 kilometers from Cowra in rural New South Wales. Sally recalls growing up without electricity or running water in an old house that was “falling down”. It wasn’t until 1964 that Cotton went back into the darkroom opening a small studio in Cowra.

“My mother and I both had a long consistent practice of taking photos although there were breaks for technological reasons,” explains Sally. “We got the films processed elsewhere, but always looked after the negatives and printed when we could.”

‘A Conversation’ is an exhibition that features the black and white work of Cotton and Sally’s colour photographs. She tells me that the idea to do a combined exhibition was first mooted by curator Sandy Edwards.

“As I began to think more about it I realised there were a lot of echoes and associations common to both of us, but in particular to some of my images. My mother never took very dark or scary looking or candid photos and I do those, but in this show the selection shows those echoes and references between both sets of photos.”

I imagine that she and Cotton had long discussions about photography, but Sally refutes that notion. “My mother and I never had a serious photographic critiquing session”.

And the pair never shot together. “We didn’t call it shooting it was just taking photographs,” she states. “My mother was quite shy and unobtrusive in her photographing manner. I like to wander around old back streets of funny looking towns and talk to strangers and take their photos. She didn’t do that, but then generally women didn’t at that time. But we both had a similar appreciation of certain things, mostly nature and solitude, aspects of solitude and we did sometimes talk about the beauty of the occasional. In this show the mood is fairly sympathetic between this selection of my images and hers,” Sally ends.

Mother & Daughter: A Conversation
Sally McInerney and Olive Cotton
13-24 May
Damien Minton Gallery
583 Elizabeth Street
Redfern

Alec Dawson
Nobody Claps Anymore









Nobody Claps Anymore
6 May – 24 May
He Made She Made
70 Oxford St
Darlinghurst

Lisa Garland








7 May - 7 June

Stills Gallery 

36 Gosbell Street

Paddington