Head On Photo Festival 2024

Head On Photo Festival 2024 returns this November to transform Sydney into a photography paradise with major exhibitions at Bondi Pavilion Gallery and outdoors in Paddington and Bondi Beach.

Every year since 2010, Head On Photo Festival offers an incredible opportunity to experience the artistry of emerging and established Australian and international photographers. It’s a wonderful chance to delve deeper into the world through photography and connect with fellow photography enthusiasts.

Diana Lui
Śākti - sky, earth, spirit, body and costume works: a longitudinal study of visual anthropology.

In the 1990s, I was in my twenties and returned home to Malaysia after five years of studying in the US. Soon after I arrived, I realised with alarm that I had somehow forgotten where I ‘came from’.
This loss of identity was because I had completely adopted another way of life during my time overseas. To overcome this cultural and identity shock, I intuitively began photographing the local, ritual dance-oriented choreographed dramas around Kuala Lumpur and further afield in Sarawak and Sabah.
I worked with exceptional dancers from companies such as the legendary Sutra Dance Company and the Five Arts Centre. The particularity of Malaysia’s performance art scene is its cross-cultural and experimental nature; most choreographers, dancers and actors had Chinese, Indian, Malay, Arab and European ancestry. This multifaceted approach to the arts perfectly fit my self-search as I had difficulty fusing my American and Malaysian identities. Malaysia, in her multi-cultural complexity, allowed me to accept my unique identity and develop my photographic writing, which I only realised much later.
Thanks to precious moments observing these fabulous eclectic dancers, I gradually began to ‘choreograph’ intuitive body movements and gestures into my portraits.
My fieldwork, accompanied by my 8×10 inch camera, has led me to scrutinise female communities and their dress codes as performative apparel in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Indonesia, China and Sardinia.
This exhibition represents a three-decade-long project.

Jan von Holleben: Dreams of Flying
Crossing the desert on a dog’s back, searching for treasures beneath the ocean, or soaring like Superman through the city – my photographs bring nostalgic dreams to life.

2002, I began my photography journey with my neighbours’ two sons, inspired by classic childhood stories and modern superheroes. The boys spun tales, and I captured them on film using a simple snapshot camera during weekends and holidays. Our adventures soon attracted the neighbours’ friends and their friends, forming a small group of kids in our South-West German village who became my creative partners. Over four years, we shared countless stories, experiences, and photographs.

Now, two decades later, I have revisited this project with a fresh perspective and timely adjustments. I am introducing previously unseen images and creating new ones that reflect today’s viewpoint. This revitalised project will be published as a children’s book.

Michael Coyne
VILLAGE Hearing the Grass Grow
Traditions are disappearing, languages forgotten, and cultures washed away due to urbanisation. This phenomenon is driven by powerful forces: economics, technology, demographics, and, increasingly, climate change. Cities generate material wealth, making urbanisation essential for economic development, while rural areas are perceived mainly as food, energy, and low-cost labour providers. As a result, villagers migrate en masse to urban centres, leading to the wholesale disappearance of village life globally.

Historically, rural villages have been abandoned due to war, famine, and environmental failures. Yet today, there is a stark finality to the decline of rural living. My images document this pivotal moment, capturing the essence of village life while celebrating its richness. In deserts and rainforests, villages vary in shape, size, looks, and smell. There is, however, a constancy in the rhythms of daily life, of simplicity and a compelling sense of community

Rural existence has been a constant throughout human history, from the early days of agriculture to the present. As we move away from these smaller communities, we risk leaving behind a vital part of our collective humanity.

Sarah Palmer
Wish You Were Here
This series explores vacation culture amidst the climate crisis and how it plays, often unconsciously, into ‘last-chance tourism’ – tourism to destinations irreparably changed by the climate crisis and may eventually vanish altogether. The more tourists visit these environments, the more widespread the climate crisis becomes, and the more last-chance tourism grows.

With the work spanning four continents and over ten years, viewers can relate to these places seared into our minds as idyllic dreamlike destinations while immersing the viewer into landscapes populated with happy vacationers seeing fading coral reefs, melting glaciers, and sea level rise threatening coastal communities worldwide. With 2023 being the hottest year on record, ecosystems and humans struggle to adapt to an ever-changing world inching toward the 1.5-degree threshold set out in the Paris Agreement.

Using a film-based multiple exposure technique (not Photoshop), Sarah creates dreamlike images that evoke nostalgia and longing and highlight the dissonance between nature, tourism, leisure and environmental crisis. The accompanying captions, however, present the dark truth being observed: a deep fascination for things that won’t last.