VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The FotoFest Biennial is the longest running photography biennial in the United States - one of the most acclaimed photography vents in the world. For the FotoFest 2010 Biennial, FotoFest is inviting, for the first time, outside Curators to put together its central exhibitions. The focus of these exhibitions is Contemporary U.S. Photography. The exhibitions feature 45 contemporary U.S. photography and video artists.

In addition to FotoFest exhibitions and over 80 independently curated exhibitions, FotoFest 2010 Biennial features Forums on Curating, the Meeting Place Portfolio Review, the Fine Print Auction, collectors' evenings and Evenings with the Artists, Workshops on online media, a Film and Video program, Artists Book Signings, the nationally known photo-eye bookstore and exhibition tours. The FotoFest 2010 Biennial Catalogue is available in early March 2010.

For the 2010 Biennial’s four principal exhibitions dedicated to Contemporary U.S. Photography, FotoFest has invited five curators to put together the exhibitions.

“The 2010 Biennial is a platform to show the different perspectives of photographic art being created today and the perspectives of a new generation of curators,” says FotoFest Creative Director Wendy Watriss. A fifth non-thematic exhibition, Discoveries of the Meeting Place, showcases outstanding U.S. and international work discovered at the FotoFest portfolio review at the previous Biennial.

"Whatever was Splendid: New American Photographs"
FotoFest at Vine Street Studios, 1113 Vine Street, Houston, Texas
Curated by: Aaron Schuman, photographer, writer, lecturer, curator. Founder and editor of SeeSaw Magazine

Aaron Schuman explores the legacy and continued influence of a “thoroughly modern photographic figure,” Walker Evans. “The striking similarities between Evans’s time and our own have become all too clear,” says Mr. Schuman. “Bearing this in mind, I began to investigate his profound influence on how the United States is still responded to, regarded, recognized and represented within photography today.”

The artists in Mr. Schuman’s exhibition are: Will Steacy, Michael Schmelling, Greg Stimac, Tema Stauffer, Jason Lazarus, Jane Tam, Richard Mosse, Craig Mammano, Todd Hido, Hank Willis Thomas, and RJ Shaughnessy.

The FotoFest 2010 Biennial, the Thirteenth International Month of Photography and Photo-related Art, begins March 12 and continues through April 25, 2010 with programming for the public occurring every week.

The full program is available online at www.fotofest.org/biennial2010.

ABOUT FOTOFEST
The FotoFest Biennial is the first international Biennial of Photography and Photo-related Art in the United States. Through the FotoFest Biennial and its year-round art programs, FotoFest is known as a Platform for Art and Ideas, combining museum-quality art with important social and aesthetic issues. FotoFest curated exhibitions give priority to the works of important but little-known photographic artists from the U.S. and around the world.

Founded in 1983 and based in Houston, Texas, FotoFest is a non-profit organization promoting photographic arts and education. FotoFest is recognized for its discovery and presentation of important talent, contemporary and historical, from around the world, its commitment to presenting important social ideas through the photographic arts, its groundbreaking exhibitions and its portfolio review program, The International Meeting Place. FotoFest has curated and commissioned exhibitions of photo-based art from Latin America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. In addition to year-round art exhibitions and programming, FotoFest’s school-based education program, Literacy Through Photography, uses photography to stimulate visual literacy, writing and analytical thinking.

Pictured above:  Hank Willis Thomas, detail "Are You the Right Kind of Woman For It", from the series "Unbranded", 1974/2007 Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery.  (full image below).