Ben Apfelbaum

JOUNALIST JESS HILL WINS THIS YEAR’S STELLA PRIZE

The Stella Prize was an unusual award as it went to a piece of journalistic work but also was the third non fiction winner in a row in the prize’s eight year history.

Journalist Jess Hill won. the $50,000 Stella Prize for Writing By Australian Women for  her work ”See What You Made Me Do’, a study of domestic abuse in Australia.

Louise Swinn, Chair of the Stella Prize judging, said Hill’s book, “meticulously dismantles all of the lazy old lies we associate with domestic abuse”, by way of “forensic investigation and highlighting personal stories.”

The Prize was awarded on Tuesday night at an online ceremony hosted by the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas with former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, in one of her rare public appearances, as guest speaker. Ms Gillard said that it was vital to address gender bias in the literary world.

Hill’s win was timely as she had an overnight severe loss of income as shutdown measures effected her areas of teaching and public speaking. The win  was not only a prestigious award but also an economic lifeline.

Her win was also timely because Hill argues in her book that domestic abuse must be addressed as a public  health issue.

She compared this directly to the corona virus health crisis. “if we don’t do anything, we will have a societal breakdown. But we do have a societal breakdown with domestic abuse- it’s like this invisible point from which destruction echoes out, and we don’t understand just have far it echoes out. ”

Featured image : Jess Hill. Pic by Jack Fisher courtesy of the ABC>

 

 

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.