Photojournalists, if you're looking to make things happen, keep reading.

June 20-25, 2010, Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist David Hume Kennerly leads a unique one-week Summer Institute at the Annenberg Center, The University of Southern California.

http://www.kennerlyinstitute.com/

Blending an extraordinary hands-on assignment photography experience with intensive academic inquiry, the Kennerly Institute is tailored for individuals who seek to hone their photojournalistic skills and to become leading edge visual communicators. The Institute encourages participants from the private, public and non-profit sectors who have a wide range of responsibilities and interests, including photojournalists, university fellows, journalism professionals, military photographers, semi-professionals and dedicated amateurs. Participants will be selected on the basis of experience and a personal statement.

Enrollment is limited to maximize one-on-one mentorship and keep ratios small. Apply early to secure a spot. $250 discount for applications received by April 1, 2010.
Select Seminars

* The Top Ten Photos that Changed History
David Hume Kennerly, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photojournalist
Geoffrey Cowan, Director of the Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy

* The Role of Photography in Documenting – and Making History
Jim Gaines, former managing editor, Time, Life, People Magazines

* Relevant Impactful Images in Today’s Media Reality
David Friend, Vanity Fair's editor of creative development

Photography Instruction sessions include:

* Assignment shooting, editing and presentation with Kennerly and a team of award-winning photographers
* The Lost Art of Photo Editing
* Shooting Hollywood
* One-on-one portfolio reviews and mentoring
* New Media & Emerging Technologies seminar
* Creation of a self-published book of images using the most current technology

Select participants will study and work with world-class photographers, political figures, journalists, and new media experts in an intimate setting in Los Angeles, California at the home of the Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy on the University of Southern California campus.

Richard Mishrach Lecture at the MFAH

In conjunction with FotoFest and Ruptures and Continuities: Photography Made after 1960 from the MFAH Collection the MFAH will host a number of lectures around the subject of photography, beginning with a lecture by Richard Misrach at 6:30 p.m. Friday, March 26. Misrach’s work has changed formally over the years, but his images have consistently played with the fine line between the sublimely beautiful and the desolate and devastated. Stop by for this lecture and see the incredible collection of photography the MFAH is exhibiting.

See the exhibit overview and images here.

FotoFest: Week 1

It really isn't easy to leave Houston this time of year. Only the SXSW activity in Austin over the last few days compares with the excitement down by the gulf. The comtemporary art scene is flourishing in H-town right now, forming the perfect foundation for FotoFest’s theme; U.S. Contemporary Photography. We visited Houston for the opening weekend and are here to tell tales of amazing places and fantastic visions.

(Asha Schechter/Matt Lipps)

Arriving in Houston on a wonderful sunny and 70˚ spring Saturday, we headed straight for the Galleria. The Williams Tower on Post Oak Blvd hosted Assembly: Eight Emerging Photographers from Southern California, an awe inspiring curation from Edward Robinson and Sarah Bay Williams with the Wallis Annenberg Photo Department at LACMA. The eight participating artists include Nicole Belle, Matthew Brandt, Peter Holzhauer, Whitney Hubbs, Matt Lipps, Joey Lehman Morris, Asha Schechter and Augusta Wood. Contemporary photo historian Charlotte Cotton was originally asked to currate this show, at which point she suggested the team from LACMA. The prints here are big and beautiful, some of the largest C-Prints I have ever seen, and all presented differently but wonderfully. Although each artist presented equally amazing work, Matt Lipps’ photo-collages have become some of my favorite contemporary images with their vibrant, saturated colours and confusing use of space. Asha Schechter shares a wing with Lipps and offers a unique take on the materiality and nostalgia we associate with our photographs by imaging the editing process of sorting and stacking prints. Be sure to pick up one of her free newspapers while you’re here too. More about Assembly and LACMA here.

(Luis Mallo)

Next, we headed over to Sicardi Gallery on Richmond Ave to check out Luis Mallo’s series Open Secrets. Mallo pointed his camera at catalogueing and archiving systems to produce a stunning set of C-Prints, most of which span 30 x 39 inches. His shots are all frontal and offer a clear look at the organization and uniformity necessary to keep archives accessible, reverting back to how we organize our own lives and questioning what will seem worth archiving in future generations.

Then, a not-so-quick stop by the Menil to treat ourselves to the surrealist collection and the Maurizio Cattelan work that is on display ( sorry no cameras allowed ). While we didn’t see any photogrpahy on exhibit, Leaps into the Void: Documents of Nouveau Realist Performance was being installed during our visit and will feature both documentation and original works from the Nouveau Réalisme movement as the Menil’s contribution to FotoFest. More to come on this next time.

(Eileen Maxson)

Afterward the Menil, we payed Russel Etchen a visit down the street at Domy Books on Westheimer and looked at Eileen Maxson’s new work Orphans of Failure. Maxson discovered a consistancy in the years 1993 and 2010, which she explores through the creation of a 2010 version of a ‘93 calendar. Using digital media and on-demand production techniques with original and found images, Maxson uses 1993 as an analogue to the current year, depicting an odd rift in American culture and offering up the notion that 1993 is a foreign and distant place. There’s always tons to look at while you’re at a Domy Books, and Orphans of Failure holds its own nicely. Maxson’s sequencing is well executed, while each image carries its own mystique.

(Ben Ruggiero/Anna Krachey)

By this point I was getting hungry and the Austinite in me could just sense a Whole Foods near by. So after a nice snack and refreshing beverage, we found our way over to the Box 13 Art Space on Harrisburg Blvd to enjoy the Panta Rei opening. Panta Rei, Greek for “everything flows” in reference to an ever fluctuating worldly existance, features eleven Austin based photographers dedicated to the progression of the medium. The space at Box 13 was ample enough to hold this juggernaut of contemporary, forward thinking work. Aside from varied framing and camera play, images such as Barry Stone’s Black Cloud have been rotated upside-down and inverted. In the case of Adam Schrieber’s Halliburton Archiving Solutions (II), 1987, a light leak casts a beautiful blue light over the confusing picture plane. Scales change, colors are sometimes altered, framing is often suprising, lighting situations may be unusual but every single image maintains its own confidence and beauty sustained through knowledge and consideration. Although each print is lovely in it own way, Panta Rei is largely successful at controlling how images are read. This is an exhibition on photo fluency beyond all others.

And that was just the opening weekend. We’ll be back next week with more FotoFest action.

Elizabeth Chiles @ testsite

ACP’s own Elizabeth Chiles will be showing her work a lot this month. Her solo show, Book of Praise, will open at testsite on Sunday, March 7th from 3-5pm. In the announcement for Book of Praise, Claire Ruud writes:

“Taking compositions found within the landscape as a starting place, Elizabeth Chiles builds syntax out of the formal and affective relationships between darkness and natural light. Her photographs endow light with temporal and spatial presence—a visible presence that nonetheless gestures toward the imperceptible and ineffable. This handling of light transforms the everyday into something to be revered. In this way, the works in Book of Praise become an ode to a presence akin to that of an altar or inspired text, or what may be the aura of the sacred.”

testsite has been a multifaceted advocate of the collaboration between written and visual media since 2003, combining artists from near and far to experiment and freely explore projects in an environment conducive to an intimate conversation. Book of Praise responds to this space by creating an installation that Chiles sees as sacred in its balance and in its feeling of empty expanse.

Elizabeth Chiles is currently a professor of Art History at Texas State University and will be participating in the 2010 FotoFest Biennial, as well as the Texas State School of Fine Arts faculty show this month. Look for more on these events very soon.

testsite is located at 502 West 33rd Street and is open from 2-5pm on Sundays or by appointment.

Read more about testsite here and view Elizabeth Chiles’ work here.