FotoFest, the Houston-based international biennial photographic exhibition and festival celebrates its 18th iteration March 7–April 19, 2020, and will include its acclaimed International Meeting Place Portfolio Review, with registration ongoing since July 30 until March 8, 2020. Co-founded in1983 by photographer Frederick Baldwin and his wife Wendy Watriss, FotoFest pioneered the formal portfolio review system three years later with the debut of Meeting Place. After 33 years it is one of the largest and most productive portfolio reviews of its kind, with a wide range of experts from the ranks of professional photography including critics, publishers, and patrons alike, converging on the city to share expertise and meet new talent from around the world.
The list of reviewers for 2020 feature some Houston curators, including Lisa Volpe, Associate Curator of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH); Malcolm Daniel, MFAH’s Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography; Ashlyn Davis, Executive Director and Curator of the Houston Center for Photography; and Dennis Nance, Curator of the Galveston Art Center. For a complete list of 2020 reviewers, please go here.
In an email conversation with photographer Loli Kantor, a longtime participant in Meeting Place portfolio reviews, Kantor writes: “I have been a participant in the Meeting Place since 2006, and it opened up a world of national and international resources for developing my book, which was published in 2014, and I also found the environment invigorating, both through the reviews and the interactions with the other participants. This playground for photographers has been a wonderful opportunity to follow the career of colleagues, and a great source of inspiration for me.”
The theme of this upcoming FotoFest is AFRICAN COSMOLOGIES—Photography, Time, and the Other, and will focus on artists of Africa and its diaspora. According to organizers, more than 100 of the area’s museums, galleries, non-profits and corporate spaces will participate in the biennial by presenting photographic work and photography-centered events during the festival’s six weeks. For a complete list of participating organizations, go here. For more information and to register, go here.
Logo for fotofest 2020
