Ben Apfelbaum

AUSTRALIA DAY 2023 BY NIGHT : A PHOTO ESSAY

Christine Anu
Dami Im & Anthony Callea
William Barton & Isiah Firebrace
Tim Campbell, Casey Donovan., Mirusia,William Barton, James Morrison
Casey Donovan & Isiah Firebrace

I was unable to cover the Australia Day activities when the sun was out as I was attending a traditional Australia Day barbecue with lashings of meat, sausages and fish. 

However I did find myself at the Sydney Opera House at Circular Quay to see the high energy  disco cabaret VELVET REWIRED featuring Marcia Hines. This show was excellent. 

As we left a spectacular fireworks display with the explosions calibrated to be in sync with the flower duet from the opera LAKME sung by Mirusia and Emma Kavanagh at the nearby Australia Day concert. The Sydney Opera House sails played their part as well.

For the thousands lining the Quay there was what one could call a festival of fire. Jet skis with flaring engines, water pack flyers propelled by aqua jet tubes flew through the air with sparklers flaming off their arms  and legs, together with drones weaving lovely patterns underneath a balmy night sky, enchanted the crowd.

We were able to sneak in to the Australia Day concert in the Sydney Opera  House forecourt as quite a few people had already left. 

We were hugely entertained by the performing artists led by Jon Foreman and his Aussie Pops Orchestra. 

The  talent on stage was world class and, at times, were able to excite the audience in to whoops, hollers and spontaneous applause.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie…Oy, Oy, Oy!

Text and photos by Ben Apfelbaum

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.