Photojournalism Now

May 01, 2015

Friday Round Up - 1st May, 2015

This week on Friday Round Up - Head On Photo Festival Preview Part 2: The Australians.

Feature:
Head On Photo Festival

Today Head On Photo Festival opens in Sydney for a month of photography madness. Come on down to the Hub to check out a host of exhibitions, artist talks, projections and more. Or visit the numerous galleries around the harbour city that are participating in this year's Festival.

This week the spotlight is on some of the Australian photographers exhibiting at Head On. While not a definitive list, this preview will give you a taste of what's in store. A veritable feast of photography awaits. Check out the Head On Photo Festival website for the full program.

Above L-R: Pamela Jennings, Patrick Boland, George Fetting, Matthew Smith, Emmanuel Angelicas and Jill Crossley

Head On Photo Festival Awards...and the Winners are:
Later tonight the winners of the Head On Photo Awards - Portrait, Landscape, Mobile, Moving Image and Student - will be announced. Check back here for all the news.

Exhibitions:

Emmanuel Angelicas – Silent Agreements Marrickville 45

From the time he was given a plastic Diana camera at the age of seven years Emmanuel Angelicas has taken photographs. That was in 1970. Since then he's used his suburb of Marrickville, in Sydney’s inner-west, as his canvas. For 45 years he’s documented his family, neighbours and strangers, capturing images of Marrickville, its humanity and its dark secrets, without censorship.

1-17 May
aMBUSH Gallery
Level 3, Central Park, 28 Broadway
Chippendale

Nocturnes in a Lapse – Filippo Rivetti

Italian-born photographer Filippo Rivetti, who now resides in Sydney, is a master of motion controlled time lapse and hyper lapse photography. In his exhibition Nocturnes in a Lapse, Rivetti uses these platforms to record the night’s sky creating a series of surreal landscapes that show an active and enveloping sky against a static earth.

1-31 May
Customs House
Ground Floor & Level 1
31 Alfred St
Circular Quay, Sydney

Portrait Work – George Fetting

Over the past 25 years Australian photographer George Fetting has worked as a features photographer for various newspapers and magazines both here and internationally. But personal work has always played an important part in Fetting's photographic education and it is this work that’s on show at Head On’s Hub.

1-10 May
Sydney Lower Town Hall
Head On Festival Hub
483 George Street
Sydney

Matthew Smith – A Parallel Universe

Originally from the UK, Matthew Smith moved to Australia in 2007 to indulge his love of over and under water photography. While most people avoid the subjects that fall under Smith's gaze, such as the Blue Bottle jellyfish in ‘A Parallel Universe’ Smith gets up close to capture what he sees as "the beautiful and fascinating creatures that inhabit our oceans".

4-31 May
Customs House
Ground Floor
31 Alfred St
Circular Quay, Sydney

Iranian Wedding – Ramak Bamzar

Ramak Bamzar's exhibition Iranian Wedding was shot between 2005 and 2008 in the small Iranian town of Karaj. "I've chosen to exhibit this work to illustrate the impact that tradition and religion has on the ritual of marriage and how dissimilar it is to Australian traditions," says Ramak who was born in Tehran and now lives in Melbourne where she works as a freelance photographer.

1-10 May
Sydney Lower Town Hall
Head On Festival Hub
483 George Street
Sydney

Craig Wetjen - Men’s Sheds

‘Men’s Sheds’ enters into a very male domain where the shed is both a place for its owner to indulge in his hobbies and also a refuge. Wetjen says the messaging in this project runs far deeper than a series of portraits of men with their bikes, cars and gardening tools. Men’s Sheds is designed to draw focus on mental health issues that face men in our community, issues that are rarely spoken of and issues which many men believe carry the stigma of being too soft, of not being a real bloke.

Until 31 May
Paddington Reservoir Gardens
251-255 Oxford St
Paddington

In Brief:

Jill Crossley - Unreliable Witness

20 May to 6 June
Stanley Street Gallery
1/52 - 54 Stanley Street
Darlinghurst

Nathan Miller - Somewhere in Jaffa

9 May to 6 June

Soho Galleries Sydney
104 Cathedral St, Corner Crown St

Sydney

Gary Grealy - Art - Maker, Patron, Lover

9 May to 12 July
Mosman Art Gallery
Cnr., Art Gallery Way and Myahgah Road

Mosman

Tanu Gago - 2014 Commission

Auckland Festival of Photography

Until 17 May
aMBUSH Gallery
Level 3, Central Park, 28 Broadway

Chippendale

Pamela Jennings and Debbie Fowler - Against the Tide

Above images (C) Pamela Jennings

Until 31 May
Darling Quarter
OPEN Public Art Space Civic Connector,

Commonwealth Bank Place

1 Harbour Street
Darling Harbour

Patrick Boland - My Inner Monologue is Analogue

Until 11 May
Gaffa Gallery
281 Clarence St

Sydney

April 24, 2015

Friday Round Up - 24th April, 2015

This week Friday Round Up focuses on the 6th edition of Sydney’s Head On Photo Festival, which is Australia’s largest photographic event. Head On opens next Friday 1st May. Today's preview features some of the international shows included in the Featured program. Next week it’s the Aussies turn.

Feature:
Head On Photo Festival

John Malkovich as Andy Warhol from Sandro Miller's exhibition

Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich: Homage to Photography Masters

exclusive to Head On Photo Festival

The Head On Festival Hub
The biggest innovation this year is the introduction of the Head On Festival Hub, a central location in the heart of Sydney where photographers can mingle, and everyone can participate in exhibitions, screenings, talks and workshops over the first ten days of the festival. This is a fantastic idea and will make it much easier for visitors to see a host of diverse exhibitions in the one venue. I'm looking forward to checking it out, along with other exhibitions I've earmarked as must sees - check out my selection below.

Festival Director Moshe Rosenzveig says, “The Hub is where you can drop in, talk about photography, and see photography. It provides the opportunity to have a social interaction with a whole lot of people”.

Located in Sydney Lower Town Hall the Hub will host nine of the Featured Exhibitions for the festival as well as screenings, artist talks, and workshops. Talks will be held during the day at lunchtimes to encourage city workers to drop in. Screenings will run constantly throughout the day.

The Hub is also the venue for the opening of the Festival on 1st May where the winners of the Head On Photo Awards, which are the flagship of the Festival, will be announced next Friday. This year there are five categories - the coveted Head On Portrait Prize plus Landscape, Moving Image, Mobile, and the new category for 2015, Student.

There’s also a program of talks, workshops and masterclasses including:

Italian photographer Alessandro Penso masterclass - Using Photography for Social Change: From Concept to Completion – click here for details

Ben Lowy, Marvi Lacar and Michael Robinson Chavez – Creating and Packaging Your Visual Story – click here for details

Sandro Miller (Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich) will present on how to shoot portraiture - click link for details

Panel discussion at the Hub on Sunday 3 May 4.30-6.30pm – Staying Relevant as a Photography Professional. Panelists are Jim Dooley, from Alexia Foundation, photographers Sandro Miller, Matt Willis, Alessandro Penso, Daniel Schuman, portfolio expert Sally Brownbill and Alison Stieven-Taylor.

The International Exhibitions - My Pick

Between Heaven and Earth - Shunzan Fan

Chinese photographer Shunzan Fan seeks to capture the importance of the dreamscape. In this series Between Heaven and Earth he features staged pictures of everyday people who pose in front of 'their dream'. Shot in black and white and then manually coloured, these images cross cultural boundaries to show that all of us have hopes and dreams no matter our circumstance or nationality.

Until 16 May
Stanley Street Gallery
1/52-54 Stanley St
Darlinghurst

Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich: Homage to Photographic Masters - Sandro Miller

Diane Arbus Twins

American photographer Sandro Miller has created an amazing collections of photographs paying homage to some of the great photographers of the past century. Enlisting the help of his friend, actor John Malkovich, Miller has painstakingly recreated iconic images such as Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, John Lennon and Meryl Streep. This is an extraordinary collection. Don't miss it.

Richard Avedon Beekeeper

Dorothea Lange Migrant Mother

Annie Liebovitz John and Yoko

Annie Liebovitz Meryl Streep

Herb Ritts Jack Nicholson

Bert Stern Marilyn Roses

28 April to 17 May
Black Eye Gallery
3/138 Darlinghurst Rd
Darlinghurst

You can read my interview with Sandro Miller in today's Australian Financial Review

Iraq Perspectives Windows - Benjamin Lowy

Shot between 2003 and 2008 through the window of a Humvee in Iraq, Lowy's images capture fragments of daily life giving an insight into a world where war and violence is not the only story.

1- 17 May
aMBUSH Gallery
Level 3, Central Park,
28 Broadway,
Chippendale

1in20 - curated by Marvi Lacar

1in20 is a project US photographer Marvi Lacar began last year with her husband photojournalist Ben Lowy; a mental health initiative born of her own journey with acute clinical depression.

1in20 is aimed at educating and destigmatising mental illness through creative storytelling and the exhibition consist of a series of Instagram posts, complete with captions and reader comments. Contributions are from those who have dealt with the gamut of human experiences from depression and suicide to sexual abuse, PTSD and the loss of a child. Adding an interactive element, visitors to the exhibition are invited to add their own comments to the prints.

Cara Anna

Echosight

Erin Mencher

Maurice Decaul

Kerry Payne

1-10 May
Sydney Lower Town Hall
Head On Festival Hub
483 George Street
Sydney

The Driest Seasons: California's Dust Bowl

- Michael Robinson Chavez

California is in the grip of crippling drought. In the Central Valley, which is home to an agriculture industry worth billions towns have run out of water and farms have been abandoned as fields lay parched. Chavez’ series, shot over 12 months, examines the effect that this historic drought is having on the people who work the fields and run the farms.