Little Heroes exhibit at the Wittliff Gallery

March 24 - August 10, 2007

Little Heroes exhibition is now available online and includes the curator's statement and biographies of photographers.

On March 24 the Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern & Mexican Photography opened the doors on its newest exhibition, LITTLE HEROES. From 1930s and ’40s images by Lola Álvarez Bravo, Héctor García, Kati Horna, and Russell Lee to recent works by Keith Carter and Robb Kendrick, this show presents over 60 images of children by 30 photographers whose work is represented in the Wittliff Gallery collection, including its world-class archive of contemporary Mexican photography.

Also in the line-up are Yolanda Andrade, Lázaro Blanco, Manuel Carrillo, Marco Antonio Cruz, James Evans, Miguel Gandert, Flor Garduño, Jesse Herrera, Earlie Hudnall, Jr., Graciela Iturbide, O. Rufus Lovett, Lee Marmon, Eniac Martínez Ulloa, Francisco Mata Rosas, Raúl Ortega, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Cathy Spence, Jack Spencer, Ángeles Torrejón, Antonio Turok, Geoff Winningham, Bill Wittliff, Bill Wright, and Mariana Yampolsky.

Connie Todd, the Little Heroes exhibit (and the Wittliff Gallery) curator, cites the visual fascination with children as one impetus behind the show:

Photographers are hunters, searching for truth, amazing revelation, and beauty; and children provide all three at once—honesty, tragedy, unpredictability, and the loveliness of youth. In images of children photographers and viewers search for who we once were and what we have forgotten; we project our hopes and fears for the future onto these endlessly fascinating little figures. Children are our barometers—our fragile extensions into the real world—and we never tire of looking at them and taking their pictures.

LITTLE HEROES will be on display from March 24 through August 10, 2007.

SATURDAY, APRIL 21, the public is invited to the exhibit reception and a panel discussion with photographers O. Rufus Lovett, Antonio Turok, and Geoff Winningham. The reception will begin at 7:00 pm and the program at 8:00 pm. The event is free. RSVPs are requested at either wittliffgallery@txstate.edu or (512) 245-2313.

O. RUFUS LOVETT is a nationally acclaimed fine-art and editorial photographer whose work on Weeping Mary, Texas—recently published as a monograph by the University of Texas Press—has received recognition from the prestigious Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards for Outstanding Magazine Photography. A TEXAS MONTHLY contributing photographer, he has also published widely in a variety of magazines, including American Photo, Communication Arts and Graphis, and his work has been included in numerous major exhibitions. Lovett was born in 1952 in Jacksonville, Alabama, and lives in Longview, Texas, about 95 miles from Weeping Mary. For three decades, he has taught photography at Kilgore College in Kilgore, Texas. In 2005, his work as a photography educator was honored by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation of San Antonio, which named him a Piper Professor. The Wittliff Gallery’s growing collection of Lovett’s work includes almost 60 prints.

ANTONIO TUROK has photographed extensively throughout Central America and Southern Mexico for the past 20 years and has published two books, Imágenes de Nicaragua (Images of Nicaragua, 1988) and Chiapas: El Fin del Silencio / The End of Silence (Aperture, 1998). Turok is a winner of the 1994 Mother Jones International Documentary Photography award and the recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and U.S./Mexico Fund for Culture for his work in Chiapas. He was the only photographer to take images of the Zapatista National Liberation Army as they occupied the colonial city of San Cristobal de las Casas in 1994. He also was the first to photograph Subcomandante Marcos. Born in Mexico City in 1955, Turok and his wife and daughter recently moved to Oaxaca, Mexico where they organize art workshops and run a digital photo gallery. The Wittliff Gallery is proud to own over 90 of his images to date, the major collection in the U.S.

Geoff Winningham, who has taught photography at Rice University since 1969, is well known for his black-and-white documentary work on Texas subjects—high school football, rodeos and livestock shows, and early wrestling. His monographs include Friday Night in the Coliseum (Allison Press, 1971), which was recently featured in Luna Cornea, Mexico’s best-known photo magazine; Going Texan: The Days of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo (1972), Rites of Fall: High School Football in Texas (UT Press, 1979), A Place of Dreams: Houston, An American City (Rice University, 1986), In the Eye of the Sun: Mexican Fiestas (Norton, 1997), and Along Forgotten River: Photographs of Buffalo Bayou and the Houston Ship Channel, 1997-2001 (Texas State Historical Society, 2003). Born in1943 in Jackson, Tennessee, Geoff Winningham lives in Houston, and for over 20 years he has offered photo workshops in Mexico and photographed widely there. At over 300 photographs, the Wittliff Gallery collection of Winningham’s work is one of the largest in the U.S.

WITTLIFF GALLERY OF SOUTHWESTERN & MEXICAN PHOTOGRAPHY
Alkek Library Seventh Floor, Texas State University-San Marcos

Directions & event calendar online

http://www.wg.txstate.edu

512-245-2313

EXHIBIT HOURS (closed breaks and holidays)

Mon/Tue/Fri: 8 am to 5 pm

Wed/Thu: 8 am to 7 pm

Sat: 9 am to 5 pm

Sun: 2 pm to 6 pm

Admission is FREE

INSTRUCTING • ILLUMINATING • INSPIRING

Part of the Alkek Library Special Collections Department at Texas State University-San Marcos, the WITTLIFF GALLERY OF SOUTHWESTERN & MEXICAN PHOTOGRAPHY opened in 1996 as a permanent collection, exhibition space, creative center, and archives. A major institution devoted to the photographic arts of Mexico and the southwestern United States, the Wittliff Gallery inspires and educates through a transnational dialogue of images by bringing together a comprehensive range of work from these regions. Its photographs, serial publications, books, videos, and ephemera reveal the importance of photography as a document of social realities and a testimony of personal visions. The Wittliff proudly houses the most significant collection of contemporary Mexican photography in the U.S. and publishes an award-winning series of books. Connie Todd, Curator.