July 13 - September 4, 2022
From the Houston Center for Photography:
“Houston Center for Photography (HCP) is pleased to announce the artists selected to participate in our 39th Center Annual Exhibition, juried by Kristen Gaylord, Associate Curator of Photographs at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. The Center Annual will include 15 artists in a group exhibition, titled Living Creatures, slated to run from July 8 to September 4, 2022.
39TH CENTER ANNUAL EXHIBITION ARTISTS:
Hannah Altman (Providence, RI)
Megan Bent (West Hartford, CT)
Melanee Brown (Houston, TX)
Jessica Buie (Austin, TX)
Margaux Crump (Houston, TX)
Austin Cullen (Lincoln, NE & Houston, TX)
Diane Durant (Fort Worth, TX)
Jake Eshelman (Houston, TX)
Adrian Martinez (New Haven, CT)
Allan Maxwell (Orlando, FL)
Robyn Moore (Wellington, KY)
Erin Neve (Houston, TX)
Nasrah Omar (Queens, NY)
Reid+Factor (Brooklyn, NY)
Amir Saadiq (San Diego, CA)
JUROR STATEMENT
The fifteen photographers in this year’s Center Annual demonstrate their understanding of portraiture as an intimate exchange where they are in a position of power, and have the ability to control their subject’s representation. Photographing another living creature is a powerful and fraught interaction, with the words describing the moment—“shoot,” “capture,” “take”—emphasizing the responsibility of the photographer. This exhibition demonstrates the wide range of emotions that the artists’ approach their position with, and the subsequent perspectives they provide for creatures whose lives are intimately intertwined with millions of others on earth.
In some cases, we gain perspective through the “capturing” of other species. Jake Eshelman shows us beekeepers and their livestock while Austin Cullen examines the human impulse to contain and display wildlife. The handling of all these bodies says more about us than it does about animals. Yet, most often these photographers show us human bodies. Some belong to people who are thriving, like Melanee Brown’s joyful women. Others, like the body at the heart of Erin Neve’s photographs, are barely surviving. However, not all of existence is so extreme. People in Hannah Altman’s work hover in mundane moments filled with beauty and vulnerability. Perhaps it is not surprising that photographers around the world right now are thinking about bodies. The global Covid-19 pandemic has reminded many people just how frail they can be. Yet for many, the privilege of forgetting their vulnerability has never been an option, as many other images in the exhibition demonstrate.
The bodies these photographers show us are gendered, racialized, controlled. They work and love and hurt; they are beautiful and frail and powerful. In the end, these photographs expose us all as fellow living creatures, imploring us to care for our own bodies and each other’s.
ABOUT JUROR KRISTEN GAYLORD
Kristen Gaylord is Associate Curator of Photographs at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, where her work furthers scholarship, preservation, and presentation of the Museum’s extensive photographic holdings. Gaylord spearheaded the acquisition of the museum’s first photographs by Black and Latina women and has organized exhibitions including Stephanie Syjuco: Double Vision (2022) as well as Thomas Moran’s Mount Superior (2021), Looking In: Photography from the Outside (2019), and Set in Motion: Camille Utterback and Art that Moves (2019). She also served as the curator for the Carter’s presentation of the nationally touring exhibition An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain (2021).
Before joining the Carter in 2018, Gaylord served as the Beaumont & Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, for three years, having previously worked there as a research assistant and a curatorial intern. Concurrently, she was also the inaugural curator of the Duke House Exhibition Series at New York University (NYU). In addition to positions at the Museum of the City of New York and the Willem de Kooning Foundation, Gaylord has taught at Ramapo College of New Jersey, Kingsborough Community College, and NYU. She has written and lectured widely, and holds PhD, MPhil, and MA degrees in art history and archeology from the Institute of Fine Arts (IFA), NYU and a BA from Westmont College.
ABOUT THE 39TH CENTER ANNUAL
The Center Annual exhibition, formerly known as the “Juried Membership Exhibition,” is HCP’s yearly group exhibition that seeks to illuminate current themes, technologies, and practices in photography. The exhibition features work from our diverse global photography community, selected by a leading curator, editor, or artist. HCP’s Center Annual provides viewers with critical insight into our current moment within the field of photography and society at large. Of those selected, three artists receive the Beth Block Juried Membership Honoraria of $1,000, generously supported by The Beth Block Foundation.
Access the 39th Center Annual Press Release Here
### ABOUT HOUSTON CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY
Founded in 1981, Houston Center for Photography is a nonprofit organization that strives to encourage artists, build audiences, stimulate dialogue, and promote inquiry about photography and related media. HCP seeks to increase society’s understanding of photography and its vital roles in contemporary, emphatically visual culture. A home to an on-site library of more than 4,500 books on photography and a state-of-the-art digital darkroom, HCP offers year-round exhibitions, fellowship programs, publications, lectures, public and outreach programs, as well as a wide range of educational opportunities.
HCP is located at 1441 West Alabama in the Museum District of Houston. Gallery hours are Wednesday–Thursday, 11 am–7 pm, Fridays 11 am–5 pm, Saturday and Sunday 11 am–7 pm. For more information, please call 713.529.4755 or visit www.hcponline.org”
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