Head On photo festival

Welcome to the Head On Photo Festival site. The inaugural month-long festival will launch at the end of April 2010, bringing together a raft of inspiring and exciting photography exhibitions and multi media events across Sydney on top of the famous Head On portrait prize. In its 7th year, the portrait prize is a significant event in the photography calendar. Showcasing some of the best portrait photography in Australia, it goes from strength to strength with each new set of winning entries.

There will be seminars run in tandem with the portrait prize so sign up to our mailing list to keep informed about exciting opportunities to hear artists and industry professionals talk on a diverse, informative and invigorating range of topics.
 
Take a look around the Head On Photo Festival website and bookmark it.
 
We will be bringing you news from the photography world in Australia and abroad and releasing new listings of our events and exhibitions.

Get involved - hold your own exhibition in your cafe or anywhere, and let us know about it so we can give it a listing.

We want to make this a forum for discussion about photography and would love to hear from you about things you've seen: what has inspired or appalled you; your loves, passions, likes, dislikes and tepid reactions to all things photographic. We can't promise to upload every rant, rave or applause but we will endeavour to keep discussions lively and on-topic.
 
There are currently some wonderful exhibitions  on in Sydney. Take time out from your Christmas shopping to sit with Martin Mischkulnig's moving and evocative Australian landscapes at the Museum of Sydney. A retrospective of Robert Macfarlane's wonderful work at the Manly Art Gallery is forcing me to confront my dread of Spit Bridge traffic in a non airconditioned car (apologies to public transport advocates: the Manly Ferry, well, any sea-going vessel, and I have a difficult relationship) and Pattie Boyd's intimate portraits of moments from her Rock-God milieu are a joy to see at the Blender Gallery, Paddington, until Christmas Eve.

I was fortunate to see Stephen Dupont's work at Judy Bell's home during his show there. What an experience to be immersed in such a strong and moving body of work! As a photo editor, I'm used to seeing Stephen's work in folio size, but to wander through room after room of his looming and breathtaking prints in the Bell's beautiful home, experiencing the work chronologically from the SingSing series, through the Port Moresby Raskols to the Axe Me Biggie portraits was breathtaking. A joy to see Stephen's books there as well. The immense Raskols book shows his talent isn't limited to what he sees through the lens. The power and vulnerability of these young men is presented here through A3 prints and punctuated with a weighty photo emulsion exposed metal plate cover. It is a photographic and graphic design tour de force.  Unfolding the beautifully crafted concertina'ed book of the 'Axe me Biggie series' plunges you into that single hour on the streets of Kabul where this body of work was realised. The frenzy and the circus of the event is timeless. His most recent portraits of Marines in Afghanistan is presented as a simple boxed set of photo sheets. The marines are shot square to frame, all in virtually the same location, and, on a facing photographic paper sheet, is a quote from each, appraising, simply, their motivation to become a marine and their experience in the war. It's a confronting expose of the nationalism, fears, anger and simplicity of modern, highly trained, beautfully lit, cannon fodder.

Judith Love