wotwedid

Looking at Andrew Campbell’s astro worlds

When visiting the Ballarat International Foto Biennale you very quickly find out that photography is a diverse and amazing communicative medium for storytelling, information transfer and as interior decoration. The 100 or more exhibitions cover walls in and around Ballarat in places as austere as the Ballarat Art Gallery, to classic Victorian halls and buildings and boutique coffee shops. Most exhibition spaces are within walking distance of the centre of town so the visitor becomes a foto flaneur…

 

This was out 3rd BIFB, in 2009 we were part of the Core Program with our Borderlines exhibition at the Post Office Gallery, so it was easy for us to slip into the exhibition walking process. I might say, it rained – or drizzled, as usual. It was cold, as usual. But people encountered along the way – old friends, new acquaintances were past of the ‘as usual’ BIFB experience.

Presented below are some images from the streets of Ballarat. What follows are some images of exhibitions seen. Occasional and brief comments about the shows, (some from the program), will be given as well as a link to the BIFB Program. Get there if you can —- there’s still weeks to go with workshops, talks and tours to add to the exhibitions.

A wrap-up report posted by the BIFB Committee is available HERE

CHECK OUT THE PROGRAM BIFB Program

BALLARAT: the view from the street

We began @ Sam Harris’ exhibition – The Middle of Somewhere

Sam Harris’ ‘The Middle of Somewhere’ Post Office Gallery

It was interesting to see the translation of book images into the space of the white walled gallery.

The Mining Exchange exhibition area – @ a very quiet time…

Part of David Williams’ exhibition alcoves

A portrait of me made by David in the 1990s as ‘The Cardinal’

Some great conceptual portrait work by a true master of portraits – David Williams

Alejandro Chaskielberg’s ‘La Creciente’

Alejandro Chaskielberg’s ‘La Creciente’

A Paraguayan immigrant travels together with an Argentinian islander, who is his employer. They are loading 3 tons of Willows, taking them to the principal port of the Delta in order to sell the wood.

An amazing exhibition of large format photography with images taken under moonlight conditions. Although the photographer claims that no flash or other lighting is used in his work …

Stephen Dupont’s ‘Piksa Niugini : Portraits and Diaries’

Dupont covers the walls of the gallery with a panoramic portrait of New Gineau tribes men and women. His ‘hold up the sheet’ separates the subject from the background which would imply a purely ethnographic recording. Now the subjects become art…

Leon Bird ‘Mrs Patronis Guest House’

Leon Bird

Jane Long’s
‘Dancing With Costica’

The Dancing with Costica series initially came about when I decided to brush up on my retouching skills. After finding the Costica Acsinte Archive on Flickr I became fascinated with the images and their subjects. I wanted to bring them to life. But more than that I wanted to give them a story (from the catalogue).

AN amazing exhibition of not just Photoshop technique but more importantly the conceptual construction of narratives and haunting places for these subjects to inhabit and live on…

Silvi Glattauer holding a gravure plate of an image from ‘Organic Balance’

One of Silvi’s gravures

Some beautiful images enhanced by the best way to make photographic images – Gravure…!

BLURB’s ‘One for the book’ Photobook Award display in Trades Hall

20 Books from around the world were selected as finalists for this award – some interesting works including one of my own…  It’s a public vote to select a winner —Vote for mine!!!

The St Patricks exhibition hall

Boryana Katsorova’s
‘Freezing’

The exceptionally cold weather and snowstorms that hit Europe in February 2012, caused traffic chaos, road closures, straining emergency services, grounding flights and pushing the death toll past 300 people and left entire villages cut off. I have documented this event in my series ‘Freezing’ capturing the distant stares of passengers (from the catalogue).

Michelle Vannier’s
‘Car Graveyard’

Thomas Kellner
‘Genius Loci – Two German Gentlemen of Siegen in the Land of the Tsars’

Film-based mosaics – each full width of the subject being a 24 exposure film. Individual frames are ‘wiggled’ to deconstruct the real subject. A detailled plan of each image’s deconstruction is shown alongside the finished work.

Amber McCraig’s ‘Americana Now’

Astronomical Society of Victoria’s
‘Wonders of the Universe Exposed’

A stellar exhibition by the astronomers with cameras – Include work by our telescope here Andrew Campbell.

Marie Watt ‘After the Rush’

Marie Watt’s series After the Rush uses infrared photography to emphasise the atmospheric solitude of the lesser known gold rush sites – in a bid to remind us of a wider vibrant, though harsher, past (from the catalogue).

An exhibition in a coffee shop…

OH!! It was such a busy couple of days…