Reportage 2010

Overview

It can be hard to connect with a story happening a world away — until you see a photograph that makes it feel like it's taking place next door. Sydney's Reportage Photo Festival, back for its 10th year and held across the National Art School East Sydney and the Australian Centre for Photography, celebrates this moment of insight from photographers around the world.

In the exhibition Guantanamo: If the Lights Go Out, the UK's Edmund Clark captures the environment of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in stark and surprising compositions. Not only that, he juxtaposes these images with those of homes the inmates have returned to as well as the naval base that is home to the American personnel. The contrast of the domestic, military and eerie imparts its own meanings on the trauma of imprisonment.

Alongside, Stephen Dupont's Afghanistan: The Perils of Freedom 1993-2009 takes a long, intimate and knowing view of a country in turmoil.

This year Reportage will also be exploring the impact of new online media platforms on documentary photography. In a unique project, photographer Billy Plummer will curate a selection of Flickr's best — a tough task from among millions of users uploading some 5000 images per minute. Irreverent portraiture and computer-friendly square formatting are trends highlighted in the exhibition, titled Reportage Without a Cause: The Rise of Flickr.

If you've missed this festival's first decade, you can get acquainted with highlights such as Adam Ward's images of the 2005 Cronulla Riots and Jack Picone's photography of Burmese refugees at Reportage: A Retrospective 1999-2009, a free, outdoor exhibition at the National Art School. You can also catch the projections photo essay series, talks, masterclasses with Stephen Dupont and Jack Picone and the big-time, internationally touring and very worthwhile Annie Liebovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990-2005 at the MCA.

Image by Edmund Clark.