Winner of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale Portfolio Review announced

 One of the major events of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale (BIFB) is the portfolio review where photographers have the opportunity to have their work professionally assessed and critiqued by a panel of leading industry specialists and renowned photographers. And every two years, a Portfolio Review Prize is given. The winner, in 2015, by consensus of the Portfolio Review panel, was Kerry Pryor. The prize, the 2015 Guy Vinciguerra Fellowship, will allow Pryor to have her portfolio reviewed at the Houston Foto Festival in 2016.

The format of the portfolio reviews provides photographers with five, twenty-minute, face-to-face presentations of their folio to reviewers. The reviewers then provide feedback regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the work shown. The Guy Vinciguerra Fellowship recipient is awarded a return airfare, accommodation, meals allowance, and registration for a four-day review session at the world’s oldest and biggest portfolio review, ‘The Meeting Place’, at FotoFest Houston in March 2016.

Pryor also has an exhibition on display at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Sight Unseen, which features portraits of people waiting for cataract surgery. She worked with Eyes of Africa, where she was entrusted to photograph each patient for records and accountability of funds. Pryor turned this documentation process into a portrait sitting recognising the opportunity to identify with the sitter and personalising the process.

The BIFB runs until 20 September and features over 200 Australian and international artists in galleries, project spaces, non-gallery venues and public sites around Ballarat.