Ben Apfelbaum

BLACK MIST BURNT COUNTRY @ S. H. ERVIN GALLERY

BLACK MIST BURNT COUNT is an exhibition which commemorates the British Atomic tests at Maralinga in remote outback Australia in the nineteen fifties. As the first survey exhibition of its kind it brings together artworks by Australian artists from the last seven decades including World War 2 modernists, contemporary artists born in the nineteen fifties, artists of the protest movement of the late nineteen seventies/eighties, Aboriginal artists from the nineties onwards, a younger generation born nineteen seventies and after (Gen X and Y).

The story of the Black Mist is retold through the works of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artists. The exhibition title refers to it whilst ‘burnt country’ refers the atomic blast score and melting the earth.

The story of the ‘black mist’ has been thoroughly investigated and documented in the 1984 ROYAL COMMISSION (McLelland Commission) into the British Nuclear Tests. While its occurrence in 1952, as a result of the first atomic test at Emu Field has been testified by both Aboriginal witnesses and white land owners in the region, the phenomenon has never been explained scientifically.

All pics by Ben Apfelbaum (c).

 

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.