Ben Apfelbaum

HEAD ON PHOTO FESTIVAL 2023 : PHOTOS TO LIGHT UP OUR WORLD

K Junction by Sugiarto Widodo
Tropkcal Metropolis by Pierre Benoon
SOS Beniamina by Adam Sebire
Sincerely Tendrara by Yzza Slaoui
Mount Fuji fisherman by John Sowden
It aint half hot, Mum by Graham Cordery
Grey sand parasols by Rachel Kane
Evacuation by Nick Moir
David Marks by Howard Schatz
Beyond The Eyes by Gillian Wang
Austalian Fashion Photography by Michelle Aboud
Airborn by Marcus Westberg

Starting from a tiny gallery hosting a portrait photo competition founded by Moshe Rosenzweig, the Festival has exploded in to an international competition. This year the Festival is a 22 day event and features over 110  exhibitions, 700 artists and a variety of talks and events.

One of the best places to see the maximum number  of photos in a beautiful setting, provided it is not raining, is Bondi Beach.

The photos are hung on the railing which separates the  promenade from the beach all the way from north to south Bondi.

The images are  weather proof  and in previous years have survived  the worst of storms and wind.

There are photos to please all sorts of tastes and the ones I have selected would look best in this publication.

This year’s Head On Festival finishes on the 3rd December 2023.

Further details on venues and dates will be found on

https://www.headon.org.au

Featured photo ‘The race I never ran’ by Essi-Murray Johnston. Photos of photos and text 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.