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.

LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph

The third annual LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph is set for June 11, 12, and 13 in beautiful Charlottesville, Virginia. Join us for 3 days of peace, love, and photography as we transform historic downtown Charlottesville into a "living image" and celebrate the careers of three legendary photographers: Martin Parr, Gilles Peress, and Sylvia Plachy. These three renowned photographers will each create a solo gallery exhibit and appear on-stage individually at the historic Paramount Theater to discuss their lifetime of work and show images from their careers. Please visit our website at www.look3.org for more details on these artists and the LOOK3 programs.

Returning in 2009 are the LOOK3 Workshops and Project Critique Sessions. Photographers of all skill levels will find invaluable instruction and experience by enrolling in classes taught by master photographers David Alan Harvey, James Nachtwey, Nina Berman, Eugene Richards, and Larry Fink. Maggie Steber and Scott Thode will lead the Project Critique Sessions to help students edit and develop working photography projects.

Other highlights include our "Masters Talks" series with presentations by Simon Bruty, Yolanda Cuomo, Eugene Richards, Callie Shell, George Steinmetz, and Philip Toledano. Paolo Pellegrin will mount a special outdoor show created just for LOOK3, and nature photographer Tom Mangelsen's majestic images will hang from the trees along the downtown pedestrian mall.

With 3 days filled with exhibitions, outdoor projections, film screenings, on-stage interviews, and special events, LOOK3 creates the perfect setting to share ideas and be inspired. Attendees will be surrounded by photography - in the trees, projected in storefront windows and on buildings, and in all the galleries. BE PART OF IT!

For more information and to buy passes, visit www.look3.org

Exhibitions: Who//What//Where

who//what//where
A photography exhibit hosted by The Society of Student Photographers, UT Chapter of the National Press Photographers Association.

May 15, 2009
7:00p - 10:00p

Pedernales Lofts, 3rd floor of building 2
2401 E. 6th, Suite 2028
Austin, Texas 78702


(Click for larger image)

"Simulacra" Photography Show

The St. Edward's University senior photography show, Simulacra, opens next week.

SEU Fine Arts Gallery
March 13 - April 3, 2009
Opening Reception March 13 6-9p

Photography in the Abstract

I recently attended the Photography in the Abstract opening at the new Lora Reynolds gallery in Austin, Texas. Although I recognized many of the photographers names I had never before seen these specific images. I was most moved by two images directly over the counter as you enter the gallery created by James Welling titled 51 and 47. Both large scale images pictured gelatin broken in to pieces. Such a simple idea yet beautiful in their final form.

The exhibition curated by New York based, independent curator Maureen Mahony examines the difficulties in defining the term “abstraction” in photography. Because the most literal and common purpose of photography is to record the surrounding world, abstraction may seem antithetical. However, since the invention of photography, artists have employed the camera and the darkroom in ways that expand upon conventional picture taking. From close-cropping to photomontage, photogram, double exposure, the use of gels and lights, painting on images, soft focus, and beyond, artists have questioned the notion of perception and exact imitation, and used the medium itself as a source to explore abstraction.

Wolfgang Tillmans addresses questions of abstraction in photography directly by creating camera-less images in the darkroom. He has noted: “It’s always about the combination between the objective and abstract representations... For me, the abstract picture is already objective because it’s a concrete object and represents itself: the paper on which the picture is printed is for me an object, there is no separating the picture from that which carries it.”

This exhibition includes work from the 1930’s to the present - giving context to both historic and contemporary work that explores the potential for abstraction within the photographic language.

Artists include: Doug Aitken, Walead Beshty, Margaret Bourke-White, Harry Callahan, Liz Deschenes, Roe Ethridge, Tamar Halpern, Sandra Hamburg, Robert Heinecken, Rainer Judd, André Kertész, Christian Marclay, László Moholy-Nagy, Barbara Morgan, Mark Morrisroe, Peter Piller, Eileen Quinlan, Gerhard Richter, Lucas Samaras, Arthur Siegel, Aaron Siskind, David Smith, Wolfgang Tillmans, Andy Warhol and James Welling.

Maureen Mahony is an independent curator, private dealer and art consultant based in New York City. A graduate of Hunter College of the City University of New York with a Master of Art History she worked with the Leo Castelli Gallery, NY for many years and currently assists artist Robert Therrien. She has organized numerous exhibitions nationally including Locating Drawing for Doug Lawing Gallery, Houston, Girlschool for Brenau University Galleries, Gainesville, GA and Suspended Narratives for Lora Reynolds Gallery in 2005.