Head On Photo Festival exhibitions @ Juniper Hall

Photography lends itself to a very large number of different themes that one can employ to get your message across through your camera lense. Photographers Laki Sideris and Johannes Reinhart are two such artists who have very different themes to their work, but it is clear why both have been included in the Head On Photo Festival.

Laki Sideris focused his exhibition on the people of the Red Light district of Tijuana Mexico. He describes it as the way that the “tourist can safely embrace the mythology of the drifter”. All the photos were taken within one city block in one night in July 2015.

The exhibition is very simply laid out and really focuses on the vibe that the Red Light district gives off. The subjects of the photographs are very natural and not posed, but have an air of mystery surrounding them. Nobody is really paying attention to the camera so it feels very normal. It feels like the Mexican version of what an Australian pub looks like on a slow night.

The photos aren’t positioned in any particularly special fashion, but there is a bit of a blue/red colour scheme going on in all the pictures. A red hue hovering over the entrance to the bar, the hum of blue off a sign behind the counter, it really sets the tone of the show.

Compared to the Heaven and Earth exhibition, Zona Norte is a really easy way to get into the shows. Once I walked into the Heaven and Earth exhibition, things got a lot more heavy.

Firstly, Johannes Reinhart explains exactly what his exhibition is about. He speaks of his internal struggle with the good and the bad within everyone and how that coincides with him losing his religion.

The images presented in this show are incredibly confronting. They exude a sense of forbid and the religious guilt all people feel when they are young and have religion present in their lives. The hazy figure behind some of the subjects in the photographs are really quite scary and juxtapose against the innocent faces really well, showing what Johannes meant when he said good and evil inside of people.

There is a very monochromatic colour palette going on with these photographs as well. I feel like if it had vibrant colours the message behind the show would be a bit lost. It was a good choice by the artist to keep things muted.

I feel it was a clever move to put these exhibitions next to each other. One is lively and fun and the other is serious and quite confronting. It makes for interesting conversation and shows a different side to the world, one that we may not be familiar with.

If you need a afternoon of fantastic photography with completely different themes, check out the Zona Norte and Heaven and Earth exhibitions at Juniper Hall, on until the 5th of June.