Masure Gallery Brings a Focused Lens to Local Fine Art Photography in Fort Worth

Photography moves fluidly between the commercial and the contemplative. Images can document a moment with precision or reshape its meaning entirely. For fine art photographers, the challenge lies not only in producing work at the highest level, but in defining a distinct voice within a medium that technology has made accessible to nearly everyone.

Masure Gallery of Photography offers a new space for fine art photographers, collectors, and admirers to experience Fort Worth and beyond through the lens of camera-wielding artists. Gallery manager Simone Fischer tells PaperCity Fort Worth that she’s been waiting for the opportunity to provide proper gallery representation to local photographers.

That opportunity came through a partnership with the co-owners of Fort Worth Camera — Jeff and CJ Masure — who transformed an event room at their store with white walls and gallery-quality lighting.

“What makes me so excited about this project is our ability to remove cost-related barriers for our artists,” Fischer says. “We are able to print and house everything in-house.”

As we chatted in the new space, which is currently featuring several photographs for RED – A Bold Photography Exhibition, CJ described the methodical work that goes into printing and cataloging works to the same standards as art museums.

“Photography is an expensive medium,” CJ says. “Producing large works like the ones we show here is difficult unless you have access to a commercial printer. We go from the roll of archival paper to the printer, then curating, and then the artist signs it. Everyone is wearing gloves. Unless someone has gone through that process, they probably don’t appreciate how complicated it is.”

Removing Barriers and Creating Opportunities for Photographers

To launch Fort Worth’s only photography gallery, Fischer and the Masures issued an open call — requiring each submission to feature the color red — that drew around 200 entries, from which 10 finalists were selected. In her past gallery director roles, Fischer typically had months to plan exhibits and select works.

“It was a new process for me,” Fischer recalls. “We just had to wait and see what came in. Ultimately, the works we saw had an incredible emergent quality. Felix Schilling’s work reminded me of Georgia O’Keeffe’s black door paintings. His composition and the lighting feel incredibly painterly.”

Masure Gallery was packed on Spring Gallery Night, Fischer says, with many local photographers spending the bulk of that day in the new space.

“Everyone was really curious about what we were doing,” she continues. “There’s something different about seeing these images on a wall and not on your screen. The space opens the photographs up. It’s been exciting to watch people get up close to these images. Local photographers have also rallied around this project. When else do you get to be on the ground floor or something and write your own rules?”

Masure Gallery represents six artists — Walt Burns, Brooks Burris, Caroline Hanson, Chris Ireland, Felix Schilling, and K.P. Wilska — and future shows will be spaced out roughly every three months, with the first solo photography exhibition, Modern Exposure by Walt Burns, opening Friday, June 4.

Modern Exposure to Feature Works By Walt Burns

After years of focusing on landscapes, Burns says he began transitioning to minimalist abstract works in 2020.

“I was shooting sunsets and grand landscapes,” he recalls. “I wanted to try something else, so instead of going bigger, I went smaller. I started seeing pieces of the building, corners of the building, sections of the building, and thought, ‘That’s more interesting to me.’ I also started following more abstract artists. I like the way their work gives me a feeling instead of showing me exactly what it is.”

Burns calls his time looking for new images to capture “fishing.”

“When I go out, I don’t know if I’m going to get anything,” he says. “I don’t always bring my camera. “I might pull out my phone or write something down if I see something. Then I’ll come back when the weather is nice, and I can look at it with fresh eyes. I love a good blue sky background.”

Fischer says she feels honored to be the first gallery to introduce Burns at the level that he deserves.

“There is a big movement happening in abstract minimalism in photography, and artists like Walt Burns, Felix Schilling, and Amy Lescher are at the front of that movement. Walt just takes these mundane cityscapes we see every day in this town, and he turns them into magic. If you weren’t from Fort Worth and you didn’t know what that was, you would just think it was an abstract photograph. So I love that there are two conversations happening.”

Galleries routinely represent dozens of artists. By focusing on six, Fischer says she can give each the attention and promotion they deserve. The long-term goal for the gallery manager and co-owners is to draw collectors to an underrepresented medium and position Masure Gallery as a space whose work is acquired by museums.

“That won’t happen in six months or even a year,” she says, “but I know I can do it for these talented photographers.”