Festivities.

FotoFest 2002

Ninth Biennial Month of Photography

Houston, Texas 

March 1 - April 1

In Houston, the month of March was filled with conversation amongst Its locals regarding the collapse of Enron, increasing levels of humidity and, Interestingly enough, photography. The biennial festival of photography, known as FotoFest, celebrated its ninth installment with the theme of "The Classical Eye and Beyond.' an exploration of traditional photography and new media. This year's festival brought together more than 100 exhibition spaces, which included galleries, museums, restaurants, non-profits and corporate spaces. To a Houstonian, such as myself, it seemed as If no real-estate stone was left unturned by the organizers.

The FotoFest biennial tradition, which first began in 1986, is considered by its organizers, FotoFest International, as "the oldest and most respected biennial of its kind in the United States." Its citywide efforts in promoting photography Is most impressive considering Houston's favoring of more traditional media, such as painting and sculpture. During the two years between biennials, FotoFest International ensures the participation of venues by continuously meeting with curators, artists and other organizers. FotoFests other accomplishments, of which ought to be noted here, include overseeing the International Meeting Place, a two-week long gathering for curators and critics to meet budding artists and review their portfolios; publishing a comprehensive exhibition catalogue that includes essays and bios of participating artists and curators; and organizing over 25 exhibitions of its own.

FotoFest's own exhibitions featured local, national and international artists in different stages of their careers. To highlight classical photography, FotoFest presented Russian Pictorialism and works by photographers Luis Lares and John Demos, whose photographs gave us a brief glimpse of life in Venezuela and Greece. Some of FotoFest's new media exhibitions featured Houston-based artists, such as MANUAL, the artistic team of Ed Hill and Suzanne Bloom, and digital imagist Prince Thomas, whose own work reevaluates pharmaceutical companies' approach to selling their products. The Whitney's new media consulting curator, Christiane Paul, organized a web-based installation that enabled visitors to interact with seven online projects at FotoFest's headquarters at Vine Street Studios. FotoFest also cleverly included a broad mixed-media category that included "Zone V: Remnants and Threads," a project by local photographer Linda Hayward and sculptor Carrie Markello whose digital imagery helped produce a slick fashion catalog advertising clothing created from materials found in lint dryers. Mid-career artists, such as Andreas MullerPohle, Martha Burgess and Ellen Garvens, were also part of an extensive sampling of artists represented by the festival's organizers.

The biennial was an ambitious project; I would suggest that it was almost too ambitious. The festival's attempt to increase the visibility of photography is noble, but its attempt to form a constructive dialogue within its own community was limited. Although the exhibitions were fantastic to see in Houston, the unusually large number of lens-based shows worked independently of each other. Consequently, the participating venues in Houston worked against producing a thoughtful collective forum regarding the topic at hand-photography. This inadequacy should not be attributed solely to FotoFest Internationals handling of the biennial, but to the local arts organizations who offered tightly packaged exhibitions that left little or no room for discussion regarding photography's contested future.

This was made evident in a presentation of video work from France at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The event, which featured the work of three artists, abruptly ended when its curator, Pascale Cassagnau, thanked the audience for their attention and quickly stepped away from the podium, avoiding discussion. Around town, artists such as William Kentridge at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Fraser Stables at the Topek Building, Claude Closky at the Blumenthal Sheet Metal Building, and Jeremy Blake at the University of Houston's Blaffer Gallery were all featured in exhibitions without any discussion regarding how they and their internet/video/animation work fit (rightly so) into the discourse of photography. By presenting these sorts of work alone under the labels of "new technology" and "new media," the dangers of immediately appearing antiquated that plague most new media exhibitions quickly resurfaced in Houston.

The effects of rapidly evolving technologies on art and society should be seriously considered in order to have a better understanding of the capabilities and inabilities of present and future photography. FotoFest certainly had the audience and the opportunity, judging from the long list of new media exhibitions, to produce a meaningful discussion through lectures and presentations related to the exhibitions at hand. (I do not imply that FotoFest replicate what SPE has achieved in its annual conference, but find a more effective way of involving its visitors in the ongoing dialogue of photography.) As a result, the new media exhibitions offered nothing more and nothing less to our current debate around photography.

Remarkably, it was not the photography exhibited that left a profound effect on me, but something much more mundane. FotoFest's ability to increase pedestrian traffic in Houston was ever so welcoming given the city's high dependency on the automobile. Heavy rainfall during the first week of March did not deter Houstonians from parking their cars and spending afternoon walks visiting participating venues distinguished by the large black-and-yellow FotoFest beacons placed alongside roads. Abandoned buildings that were temporarily turned into exhibition spaces, as seen at French artist Georges Rousse's downtown installation, were once again resurrected for Houstonians who continuously witness the displacement of historical buildings for the construction of parking garages and high-priced lofts. Although this may sound like a ridiculous matter to mention in a review of photography, it made FotoFest doubly eventful for our community.

MONICA GARZA is the Assistant Director of Exhibitions anti Programming at the Lawndale Art Center in Houston, Texas. Lawndale Art Center was one of 140 venues participating in FotoFest 2002.