Ben Apfelbaum

ARIA AWARDS 2019

The Star rolled out a huge, long red carpet (orange actually) for the creme de la creme of the music industry for the ARIA 2019 awards.

There were not many punk/rock outfits  with most female artists opting for glamorous ballgowns, sequinned dresses and stylish pants suits.

Because there seemed to be a complete replacement for last year’s nominees I confess that I did not recognise most of the artists who posed in front of the media wall. This included this year’s four time Aria award winner Tones and I’  claiming Arias for Best Female Artist, Best Pop Release, Breakthrough Artist and Best Independent Release.  A year ago, using her real name, Toni Watson, she was busking in Byron Bay. Symptomatic of the way one can achieve recognition as an artist she put her songs on the internet  and almost instantly shot to fame. Her song ‘Dance Monkey’ gathered one billion streams locally.

On the other side of the music spectrum the Teskey Brothers, who have toiled away for years in pubs, won Best Blues and Roots album.

A group which got their start at a Sydney School’s Spectacular concert as teenagers and then went on to conquer Las Vegas and the world , Human Nature, were inducted into the ARIA  Hall Of Fame.

Promoter Michael Chugg received the ARIA Industry Icon award.

Guy Sebastian was a Fan Voter Winner for Best Video and Song of the Year for the song ‘Choir’.

In this category there was even an award for The Music Teacher Of The Year Antonio Chiappetta of St Andrews College, Mariyong NSW.

 

 

 

 

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborlang. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, United States, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication. To celebrate the opening of a permanent Photography Gallery, the State Library of New South Wales selected 400 shots from its archive of over 2,000,000 images to display in the new gallery. An image of mine was plucked out of the multi million photo archive to be part of the inaugural exhibition.