The month-long sixth Ballarat International Foto Biennale, featuring international photographers and major local shooters, will begin on August 22.
The sixth Ballarat International Foto Biennale, featuring international photographers along with a wide range of local shooters, will be held in the regional western Victorian city from August 22 to September 20.
The festival, one of the biggest in Australia, has attracted a huge range of elite photographers since it began in the nearby country town of Daylesford in 2005, but this year it will feature Melbourne-born, Chinese-based Dave Tacon, Argentinian Alejandro Chaskielberg, London-born Sam Harris (who is now based in Western Australia), and Australian photojournalist Stephen Dupont.
BIFB includes two major exhibition programs: the curated Core Exhibition Program, and the open entry Fringe Exhibition Program. It involves a city wide presentation of over 100 shows staged within more than 100 galleries, project spaces, commercial businesses and public sites, along with a major program of screen-based presentations in the Projections Program.
In 2005, Daylesford-based photographer and lecturer Jeff Moorfoot created a festival which celebrated photography in all forms, featuring local photographers, but with an international outlook. Ten years later BIFB has become an important photographic event on the world stage. The BIFB Core Program is a series of invited exhibitions by 21 Australian and international artists, representing some of the best and most innovative contemporary photographic practice currently being developed around the world. The Core Program is staged in seven heritage buildings in central Ballarat. Exhibitions in the Core Program focus on new work and a diverse curatorial approach presenting shows which encompass all the genres of photography, from reportage to fine art.
The BIFB Fringe Program provides a stage for photographers of all levels to present their talents to the broadest possible audience, and to show alongside, learn from, and be inspired by some of the best photographic talent from around the world.
The highlights of this year’s event will include Shanghai Decadencewith Chinese Characteristics, by Dave Tacon (who works in Shanghai, China). The photographer, writer and cinematographer, is the 2012 Winner of the Walkley Award for Best Freelance Journalist of the Year and a two–time finalist in Australia’s National Photographic Portrait Award. His portrait and photo-documentary work is held in the permanent collections of the National Portrait gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia, State Library of Victoria and Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
Also showing will be La Creciente, by Alejandro Chaskielberg (Buenos Aires, Argentina). Chaskielberg works with photography on a blurred border between documentary images and fiction. His use of colour and a dramatic world view are influenced by his background as a Director of Photography and a photojournalist. He received the Magnum Foundation’s emerging Photographer award and the 2011 L’iris D’or Sony World Photographer of the Year Award, as well as numerous other international honours.
From Australia, renowned photojournalist Stephen Dupont will show his work Piska Niugini. Over the past two decades Dupont has produced a large, strong body of work, including photographs of fragile cultures and marginalized peoples. His images capture the humanity of his subjects, often in some of the world’s most dangerous regions. He’s received international acclaim for the artistic integrity and valuable insight into people his work displays. He explores the culture of communities which have existed for hundreds of years, yet are often fast disappearng.
Another highlight will be The Middle of Somewhere, by Sam Harris. Born in London, Harris now works from Balingup, in southwest WA. Throughout the nineties Harris shot portraits for recording artists in London and worked as an editorial portrait and features photographer for UK publications like The Sunday Times Magazine, Esquire, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine and Dazed & Confused. He abandoned his London career for the forests of Western Australia, where he photographs his on-going family diary. Harris is now a photographer and educator and also co-hosts ‘Photos on the Radio’ on ABC Southwest’s breakfast show. His self-published photo book Postcards from Home was awarded the Australian publishing industry’s Galley Club Australian Book of the Year in 2012 and his next book The Middle of Somewhere will have its Australian release in 2015 at the Biennale.
From 'Piska Niugini' by photojournalist Stephen Dupont.
Images from photojournalist Stephen Dupont's series 'Piska Niugini', shot in Papua New Guinea, will be a major part of BIFB 2016.
