Ben Apfelbaum

RED CARPET : FIRST MAN

Red Carpets, in this case a Black Carpet, usually hosts stars, starlets and traditional media personalities. Lately this has extended to social media influencers, but in this case it was scientists who also took part in keeping with the theme of the movie.

FIRST MAN is about NASA and Neil Armstrong’s race to beat Russia to have a man walk on the moon. It reunites Ryan Gosling and director Damien Chazelle who collaborated so successfully in La La Land.

Also starring Claire Foy (of The Crown fame) as Armstrong’s wife Jane, the film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on August 29, 2018 and is scheduled to be released by Universal Pictures later this month. With backing by Steven Spielberg as an Executive Producer the film has received critical acclaim from those who have already seen it.

Featured image – Professor Josh Bland-Hawthorn & Dr Karl Kruszelnicki. All pics 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.