A CREATIVE relationship between Fremantle Ports and FotoFreo Inc last night won the prestigious Innovative Partnership category in the State Arts Sponsorship Scheme Awards for their joint effort to promote community engagement of photography.

As part of the FotoFreo event held in March this year, Fremantle Ports worked with FotoFreo Inc to incorporate images of the working port from Fremantle Ports' contemporary collection taken by local photographer Roel Loopers.

In a remarkably innovative move and a first for Fremantle, large format, colour images were projected onto the side of the Fremantle Ports' administration building. This provided a public, large-scale exhibition, which also worked to promoted Fotofreo's other events and exhibitions.

The partnership enhanced FotoFreo's events while highlighting Fremantle's important linkages to the world and Fremantle Ports' role in facilitating those linkages.

Fremantle Ports was pleased to win the award, and delighted with the success of its partnership with FotoFreo Inc, acting Chief Executive Officer Chris Leatt-Hayter said.

"Fremantle Ports and FotoFreo believed there were real synergies between the international photographic exhibition and the exhibition of images examining the City of Fremantle's major linkage to the world its port," Mr Leatt-Hayter said.

"We are committed to supporting the arts in Fremantle and we were attracted to the FotoFreo 2004 event by its international and national focus and its commitment to the promotion of excellence in the art of photography.

"We worked closely with local photographer, Roel Loopers, and FotoFreo Inc's Bob Hewitt to develop an artistic exhibition of print photographs in the Fremantle Ports administration building foyer.

"This meant that Roel's photographs could be seen in a gallery setting as large-format prints during the day, and at night these same images were projected onto the outside wall of Fremantle Ports' administration building at Victoria Quay.

"In this way, and because of the scale of the projections clearly visible from the other side of the harbour and from Monument Hill the exhibition captured the imagination of the broader community by, as photographer Roel Loopers puts it, 'finding beauty in the ordinary'."

Media contact: Lachlan McCrudden, 9430 3476