Ben Apfelbaum

SYDNEY FRINGE FESTIVAL LAUNCH @ SYDNEY TOWN HALL

Featured Image- Porcelain Alice and Atlantis. All images by Ben Apfelbaum.

The Sydney Fringe Festival was launched recently on the steps of the Town Hall by Lord Mayor Clover Moore, surrounded by fringe artists.

Kerri Glasscock indicated that 2016 has been a challenging year for independent artists. Artists are voicing their protest and banding together in support of each other’s work to ensure that we all have a vibrant and creative city to enjoy.

It is this energy that the Sydney Fringe Festival hopes to harness to celebrate the wonderful cultural offerings year round. Fringe is about reawakening old haunts, reviving long forgotten venues and activating new precincts.

Fringe hopes to change the landscape of Sydney forever, encouraging independent artists, artmakers, cultural leaders and local taste-makers to move into one of the most recognisable roads in Sydney. Once a mecca for live music and Indie culture Parramatta and Pyrmont Bridge roads will once again come alive to launch Sydney’s new home of culture and creativity – the Off Broadway Precinct.

Warehouses, shopfronts, bars, pubs and spare spaces in this area have now become home to a thriving community of local independent artists with studio spaces, galleries, rehearsal rooms, performance spaces and independent creative retailers. Launched during the 2016 Sydney Fringe Festival, the Off Broadway Precinct, it is hoped, will continue to grow beyond September to become one of the City’s most important cultural assets.

Meanwhile, during September, this Precinct will be the Festival’s hub.

For more details of events during the Festival visit www.sydneyfringe.com.

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 Treborland. 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.