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The biggest night in Australian photography
Head On Photo Festival 2022
Highlighted exhibitions
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Paper Tigers
Celebration of the best of Australian photojournalism, featuring 60 images from the best photojournalists. A celebration of the best of Australian photojournalism, the Paper Tigers exhibition features sixty images from sixty of the best Australian photojournalists. The need for truthful journalism has never been more critical. It is through the lens of these photographers that we understand and experience much of the world’s events. Look back at the most critical moments through recent Australian history, and the images by which we remember them.
Illusion
In the 1990s, a friend visited an isolated tribe in east Africa for investigation. The chief gave him a precious and beautiful accessory made of wolf teeth and animal bones. A decade later, he visited again, this time receiving a handiwork created from a Coca-Cola can, valuable for its rare emergence in this place. People in different environments have different values, and such diversity can be confounding.
Hair Portraits
I reached a point in my life when all the things I knew to be true – the entire structure, the scaffolding of my life seemed to disappear. I felt something was lost. I was no longer the same person I was when I entered motherhood. With children growing up and needing less, the person I was seemed irrelevant and out of place. Victorian-era mourners often used hair tresses to make mementoes, art, and sculptures. The custom of keeping a lock of a child’s hair, or one’s own shorn locks as a memento, is a remnant from this time.
Homage to chicks
Homage to chicks is an edit of photographs taken from 1990 to 2012, reimagined into a new artwork; a singular narrative of 126 photographs highlighting women in the music industry. Throughout is a message of reverence for these women, placing them at the centre of the story.
Superheroes in lockdown
Superheroes in lockdown was produced during Melbourne’s restrictive and prolonged 112-day COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. The subjects are serious cosplayers who would usually spend their days visiting patients in hospitals or attending Comic-Con events, but just like the rest of the Melbournian population, they were confined to their homes.
Isolated Building Studies
I have been working on this typological project since 2006, photographing over 700 Chicago buildings to conceptualise how investment and divestment have affected Chicago, segregating the city by race and class. The physical isolation of residential and commercial buildings is a potent vehicle to explore inequality. A tension is exposed; the urban form clashes with the seemingly suburban, even rural, setting. My intention is to foreground this tension within each photograph and ask, “Why is this building isolated?”
Highlighted festival events
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Anthropology through photography
Don’t miss this thought-provoking panel discussing how photography is used ti capture humanity – in all its forms. Featured artists will discuss their people-focused projects and how the camera gives them new insight into how people live their lives. 11am-12.30pm Saturday, 5 Nov
BLAZE international premiere
Join Murray Fredericks and Academy Award-nominated Bentley Dean for the international premiere of Frederick’s film BLAZE. 5-6pm, Saturday 5 Nov
Narratives of womanhood
While women are no stranger to being the subject of art, what changes when women create their own image? Narratives of Womanhood explores what it means to be a woman and how our featured artists have delved into their gendered existence through their unique photographic styles. 10:30am-12pm Sunday, 5 Nov
Behind the exhibition: part 1
Don’t miss the first of our four-part artist talks at Head On Photo Festival 2022. In this session, Eric Kunsman, Serena Dzenis, Rachel Portesi, and Brian Cassey will take you beyond their image into their inspirations and process. 12:30-1:30pm Saturday, 5 Nov
Meet the finalists
What makes an image stand out? Join judges and selectors who blind judged this year’s Head On Photo Awards as they share what about the finalist’s photographs are significant to them and how the judging process works. Hear from the finalists themselves as they discuss their process, inspiration and work and participate in a conversation about the award-winning photographs. 2.30-4.00pm Sunday, 6 Nov
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Events not to be missed
This year’s Festival features over 30 events, including gallery openings, artist talks, panels and workshops. Here’s a few to check out!
Motherhood in focus
This year, Head On Photo Festival 2022 comprises many photographers, who, through their stunning work, explore what it means to be or to know a mother. Their visual stories interweave, compliment, contradict and intersect in many ways, offering unique views on what it means to be a mother, the identity of motherhood, and the complexities of mother-child relationships.
In Conversation with Chris Byrnes
Chris speaks to Diana Nicholette Jeon about her practice and her life.
The largest stateless nation in the world
Younes Mohammad, a Kurdish photographer based in Iraq, captures the nomadic nature of his people, the Kurds, and the troubling effects diaspora has had upon the rich Kurdish culture. While having no official state, the Kurds are one of the most established tribes in the Middle East – residing in the region for several […]
Somewhere beyond reality: Nikos Economopoulos
What’s happening when you’re pushing 70, and the vast majority of your 65,000 Instagram followers are aged 25-34? For Nikos Economopoulos, the answer has a lot to do with the feelings evoked by his strange, unsettling images. The element that’s too often missing in contemporary photography, he says, is human emotion. Head On Interactional’s Feature Editor Tony Maniaty caught up with him in Athens.
Head On Foundation acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we work and live. We pay our respects to the Elders past, present and future, and extend this to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
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Head On Photo Festival is an inclusive arts festival for all ages and requires your support.