Bring on
the Americans — and the Texans. That’s the rallying cry of Houston's FotoFest 2010,
“Contemporary U.S. Photography.” While it may not be the biggest International
Biennial of Photography and Photo-Related Art, it’s perhaps the most clearly
focused. It's also presciently close to home. Houston will become the epicenter
of the international photo firmament for a full six weeks, March 12 through
April 25, with 100-plus shows and thousands of
photographers, collectors and media in attendance. We’ll cover the highlights
as they unfold in our blog. But meanwhile, here our are
picks for the 10 shows we'll be checking out, starting with four organized by
FotoFest. For 2010, artistic director Wendy Watriss has tapped three
independent curators (including former MFAH curator Gilbert Vicario, who
returns from his post at the Des Moines Art Center to organize
"Medianation: Performing for the Screen") plus an entire curatorial
team from Los Angeles County Museum of Art's photography department (for
"Assembly: Eight Emerging Photographers from Southern California").
Two of the other FotoFest-organized offerings evoke the shifting fortunes of
America: "The Road to Nowhere" and "Whatever Was Splendid: New
American Photographs." (Congress needs to catch these exhibitions.) At the
participating spaces, must-sees are the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's
"Ruptures and Continuities: Photography Made after 1960 from the MFAH
Collection" curated by new hire Yasufumi Nakamori; DiverseWorks' solo for
Allison Hunter, who introduces a new video in her ongoing, otherworldly saga
about the planet's fauna; and four top gallery views for Texans: Spacetaker
founder David Brown at Darke Gallery revealing our town via a series of
lenticular prints that squash the space-time continuum; Beaumont native son
Keith Carter at McMurtrey Gallery with classic black-and-whites in
"Shangi-La”; Casey Williams' heroic color abstractions snapped at the
Houston Ship Channel at Rudolph Projects/ArtScan Gallery; and brilliant duo
Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher at McClain Gallery, cooking up another
high-tech/low-tech presentation. March 12 through April 25 (participating
spaces' dates may vary); complete exhibition listings, fotofest.org.
Image: Greta Pratt’s Christine Sweeney, 2009, in FotoFest’s “Road to Nowhere?”; photo courtesy of the artist.