On March 1, the International Festival of Photography will fill the streets of Melbourne and regional Victoria with the joy of art. The second biennial exhibition of contemporary photography, Photo 2024, features 100 free exhibitions and outdoor artworks across seven festival precincts in Melbourne as well as five cities in regional Victoria.
It is presented in partnership with over 50 museums and galleries including ACMI, State Library Victoria, Museum of Australian Photography, and the Centre for Contemporary Photography. This year, there is also an artist film program every evening on the large outdoor Fed Square Screen. Putting together a festival of this magnitude is quite a feat and at the helm of that herculean effort is the event’s artistic director and founder, Elias Redstone.
The idea for the event was seeded when Redstone visited Melbourne on a research trip for a new book on photography, and was then inspired by the photographers, curators and educators he met. “I left Melbourne blown away by the strong photographic culture I saw, and the great people I met. Anywhere else in the world this would be celebrated, but it had seemed to be going under the radar in Melbourne,” he says. “When I moved to Melbourne, the idea for the festival emerged as a moment that would allow the sector to come together and create something truly spectacular.”
The festival took shape through a year-long consultation process. “Everyone I spoke with not only fully supported the concept but helped inform the final structure of the festival. It grew organically through conversations with people in the community, and lots of coffee,” Redstone recalls.
An important event in Australian culture? Without question. The festival has already attracted attention overseas and shows off Melbourne, and Australia, as important centres of photography.
Redstone took Capture behind the scenes to provide a snapshot of the creator and the creation of Photo 2024.
Capture: What is the theme for PHOTO 2024? And how did you source the photographers for PHOTO 2024?
Elias Redstone: The theme for PHOTO 2024 is The Future Is Shaped by Those Who Can See It. The world has changed immeasurably in recent years and we have invited photographers and artists to share their insights of the world as it is today to raise questions about what lies in store for us tomorrow. Its 100 exhibitions invite audiences to think about the possible and parallel futures that lie ahead and how current actions are shaping future realities – from AI-generated images and surveillance evasion to climate futures and animal espionage.
Every festival, we run an open call that invites photographers to put themselves forward for participation in the outdoor exhibitions. We have a network of curatorial advisors from across Australia and overseas that help us make the selection. We also invite specific photographers and artists whose practice is pertinent to, or has helped inspire, the festival’s theme. Museums and galleries curate their own responses to the theme. This provides space for a myriad of curatorial and artistic perspectives to come together, with opportunities for photographers at different stages of their careers, to build a rich and varied program for audiences.
Capture: What have been the challenges in putting the festival together?
Elias Redstone: While there have been many challenges, there has been one enormous hurdle along the way. Our first festival was conceived as PHOTO 2020 and was planned to open in April 2020. For obvious reasons, we had to postpone the entire festival a few weeks out from opening, and it was presented a year later as PHOTO 2021. We then kept to our original biennial schedule and delivered PHOTO 2022 a year later, most of which was programmed from our homes while in lockdown. The festival normally takes a full two years to deliver, so it took an inordinate amount of work and energy to deliver it in half the time. The whole sector rallied together to make it happen. Secondly, delivering such an ambitious program requires lots of planning, and funding to commission photographers. As a new festival, we are only able achieve this through donations.
Capture: Can you give me your view of the state of art photography in Australia?
Elias Redstone: I often get asked, ‘Are we good enough in Australia?’ and the answer is always a resounding yes. I wouldn’t have started the festival if I didn’t believe in the incredible talent here, and that it is deserving of international attention. When I get the time to judge prizes and review portfolios abroad, I am always reminded about the strength of practice and diversity in approaches to photography that exist in Australia. The standard of work being produced here is very high.
There are so many photographers I admire that it would be unfair to just name a few. That said, there are a number of photographers that I admire greatly that I have had the honour of working with across PHOTO 2021 and PHOTO 2022, such as Zanele Muholi, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Hoda Afshar, Tony Albert, Atong Atem, Mohamed Bourouissa, Daniel Shea and Sam Contis. I am also very proud that we launched Queer PHOTO this year, as a partnership between PHOTO Australia and Midsumma. It is Australia’s first Festival of Queer Photography and includes amazing local and international photographers including Sunil Gupta, Lilah Benetta and Clifford Prince King.
Capture: What are you most looking forward to at PHOTO 2024?
Elias Redstone: This is the first festival that we have been able to plan for international photographers and curators to come to Melbourne and many of them are speaking at our PHOTO 2024 Ideas Summit on Friday 15 March. This is our new headline event and a first for Australia, a day-long global ideas forum exploring the future of photography. There are around 20 speakers throughout the event, and it will close with a talk by cult American photographer Ryan McGinley.
I am also excited for our all new, expanded, free Photobook Weekend that closes the festival on Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 March with exclusive exhibitions, book launches, award announcements and a market where photographers, artists and publishers will be selling their photobooks directly to the public.
Capture: Please tell me about your background and what drew you to photography.
Elias Redstone: I grew up on a farm in rural England, and from an early age photography was a window into the wider world, a medium to help me learn about different lived experiences, and to learn about myself in the process. While I always enjoyed taking photos, I was more interested in the work of others.
I kept returning to photography in my work as a curator. I wrote a book called Shooting Space for Phaidon that featured fifty photographers including Annie Leibovitz, Wolfgang Tillmans, Idris Khan and Catherine Opie. I was also invited to curate the exhibition Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Digital Age at the Barbican in London, a vast 1,393m2 Brutalist gallery in London. The exhibition featured some of the all-time greats such as Walker Evans, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky, Berenice Abbott, Stephen Shore and Hiroshi Sugimoto.
I continue to be inspired by the medium as it continues to evolve and reinvent itself through the rise social media, fake news, the mainstreaming of AI, deepfakes and so much more. And, in its purest form as a tool for documentation, photography has never been more important.
PHOTO 2024 runs from 01 – 24 March 2024. You can see more of the amazing line up here.
