Help us continue to showcase great photography in Sydney.
Join us as we bring great photography by emerging and established photographers that explores ideas and our world through an annual festival of exhibitions, workshops and conversations led by Australian and international artists and thought-leaders. Head On Photo Festival is presented by the not-for-profit Head On Foundation.
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Festival Year :
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This series documents a group of elderly women living within an isolated peninsula in Northern Siberia. They were once part of a migrating society of reindeer herders, but today, in their old age, spend most of their days in solitude, isolated from nature and their wandering community. While men are encouraged to maintain their roles as herders as they grow older, women often face the struggles of old age alone. I immersed myself among the people living in this the small Siberian village. Over many cups of tea, they shared their stories, lullabies, and longings with me. Listening to their stories felt like walking on a thin line between present and memory, reality and a dream. Using those stories as my map and compass, I went to document the same spaces they thrived in long ago. I created photographs inspired by their memories of the past and juxtaposed them with portraits that reflected their current reality. By doing so, I tried to give their stories a visual representation— One that could last after they are already gone.
Artist talks
When: 12.30pm Saturday 4 May
Where: Festival Hub, Paddington Town Hall, 249 Oxford St, Paddington NSW 2021
Topic: How to receive a portrait instead of taking it and four other lessons the people I photographed taught me
AND
as part of Head On Conversations, session 1 Why is nobody paying attention? Recapturing the audience
When: 1.30-2.45pm Saturday 4 May
Where: Imperial Hotel, 252 Oxford St, Paddington, NSW, 2021
Oded Wagenstein was born in 1986 in the Middle East to a family of migrants from the Balkans. He uses the photographic medium to explore the themes of ageing, longing, and memory. Oded received a degree in Sociology, Anthropology and Film, from Tel Aviv University. Last year, his photographs were exhibited in the United States, Russia, Germany, South Africa, China, Bangladesh, and more. His work has been featured by National Geographic, BBC, The Guardian, and VOGUE, among others. In 2018 he was a winner of the PDN Annual Photo Awards, LensCulture’s Emerging Talent Awards, and selected for Photolucida’s Critical Mass Top 50. Oded is currently a senior lecturer at the Galitz School of Photography in Tel Aviv.
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“The blanket of colonisation has been woven on violence and oppression has denied us all a kind truth. The impact of broken culture and languages and spiritual practices has left a deafening silence around violence in our intimate relationships causing violent assaults and sexual abuse.
Kindness is a movement. Sharing it is accessing your basic human right to personal and communal safely. We need to own our stories and come together to appreciate each other and listen. Violence hurts, it hurts society, its hurts families and it hurts you and I.
My Grandmothers were stolen from their families and enslaved, their culture and language denied. As a young person who witnessed family violence, I would never have believed I would be here today.
Understand that someone may not be ready to leave, and be kind and understand, don’t carry judgement or resentment of someone else’s journey. Give them a place to speak openly without being afraid or judged.
I said to my good friend, ‘I can’t live in this oppressive state of mind and not do nothing about the violence we are experiencing, personally and in society’. So begins the change when knowledge is learned and processed. Holding onto anger and resentment isn’t worth it.
No one person can be what you need to be or feel what you need to feel. Find safety within yourself.”
Dixie Link Gordon
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Arts and Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney
