Heidi Romano

Heidi Romano is a photographer and festival director with a diverse skill set, honed through 15 years of experience. She often acts as a guest curator, portfolio reviewer or judge at Les Rencontres d'Arles, PhotoIreland, Feature Shoot, Lenscratch, Asia Pacific Photobook Archive, Urbanautica, Ballarat Foto Biennale, Critical Mass and Landscape Stories, amongst other industry related festivals and events. 

Photography is her playground: finding moments of stillness, wild landscapes and capturing what is around her and close to her heart. She reduces everything to the essential, leaves out distracting items, and focus’ on the necessary. Her art is always represented in an abstract and minimalistic style to create some ambiguity about the object pictured and encouraging a more lasting visual response. At the centre of her photographic practice she is looking for the unknown in the familiar. For her photography is an experiment in visual poetry as well as a challenge of the perceptions and expectations we have of our surroundings.

Heidi has a critical eye for the issues that count. She is a passionate book designer and loves working with artists through all levels of project development. In late 2009 she founded Unless You Will, an acclaimed online photography journal dedicated to showcasing the finest of international visual storytelling. In February 2015 she directed the inaugural Photobook Melbourne festival and thus established a new platform for artists, bookmakers and book lovers in Australia.