Current exhibit at the Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection / Wittliff Collections

March 27 – July 31, 2010

VAQUERO: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy

by BILL WITTLIFF

New digital carbon-ink images touring with Humanities Texas
on exhibit at the Wittliff Collections now through July 31, 2010

Exhibition reception April 17, 2010

SAN MARCOS, TEXAS—Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is currently touring more than 60 of Bill Wittliff’s images from the series Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy that have been recreated as rich carbon-ink prints. Accompanying the images are bilingual narrative texts taken from his monograph by the same name. This new exhibition makes a stop at the Alkek Library’s Wittliff Collections at Texas State University-San Marcos from March 27 through July 31, 2010. Exhibition hours are online at www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu.

The exhibition will be celebrated on April 17 with a reception with Bill Wittliff and a special talk by former Collections curator/director, Connie Todd, who will be speaking about the exhibition ¡Viva México!, which is running concurrently. Admission to the exhibitions and event is free and open to the public. Attendees are asked to RSVP to 512.245.2313 or thewittliffcollections@txstate.edu.

Humanities Texas is promoting and traveling the new Vaquero exhibition to schools, libraries, museums, and other venues throughout Texas and the United States as part of its mission to support research, education, and public programs in the humanities. Co-curated by Bill Wittliff and Carla Ellard, assistant curator of the Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection, and made possible in part by a “We The People” grant from the NEH, Vaquero is available to rent: http://humanitiestexas.org/exhibits/list/vaquero/index.php.

When Texas moved into the cattle business, its cowboy adopted many of the Mexican vaquero’s accoutrements and centuries-old methodologies of working herds in big country. Drafted by historian Joe Frantz in the early seventies to witness one of the last traditional roundups on the vast Rancho Tule in northern Mexico, Bill Wittliff fixed the vanishing vaquero tradition forever in nearly 5,000 photographs taken over a period of three years.

In 2004, the University of Texas Press published the best of Wittliff’s series of sepia-toned darkroom prints in the monograph, Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy. The 175-page, full-color monograph features an introduction by revered Texas author John Graves, who elegizes the loss of “vaqueros doing their beautiful, strenuous work with horses and cattle in the old, old ways. But at least they can be found here, in Billy’s lovely and meaningful photographs. We are most fortunate to have them.”

Wittliff’s Vaquero photographs have been exhibited in numerous galleries and institutions throughout this country and in Mexico, including the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and the Texas Capitol. In Japan, they represented the United States during its bicentennial year.

Bill Wittliff, of Austin, Texas, is a distinguished photographer and writer whose photographs have been exhibited in the United States and abroad and are the subject of three books, Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy, La Vida Brinca (UT Press: 2006), and A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove (UT Press: 2007). As a screenwriter and producer, his credits include The Perfect Storm, The Black Stallion, Legends of the Fall, Lonesome Dove, and others. Cofounder, with his wife, Sally, of the highly regarded Encino Press, Bill Wittliff is also a past president and Fellow of the Texas Institute of Letters, a recipient of the Texas Book Festival Bookend Award, and the Texas Medal of Arts. He is also a member of the historic Texas Philosophical Society and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. In 2008, Wittliff was asked to join the board of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D. C., and was inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. Together the Wittliffs also founded, with the support of Texas State, the Wittliff Collections, which include the Southwestern Writers Collection and Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection where the Vaquero photographs reside as part of the permanent holdings.

March 27 – July 31, 2010

¡Viva México!

CELEBRATING THE COUNTRY IN PHOTOGRAPHS

On exhibit at the Wittliff Collections now through July 31, 2010

Exhibition reception April 17, 2010

To honor the bicentennial of Mexico’s declaration of independence from Spain and the centennial of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, the Wittliff Collections present ¡Viva México!

This photographic exhibition from the Collections’ permanent holdings at the Alkek Library, Texas State University-San Marcos, opened March 29 and runs through July 31, 2010. Exhibition hours are online at www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu.

Curated by Carla Ellard, assistant curator of the photography collection, and co-arranged with Connie Todd, former director/curator, ¡Viva México! will be celebrated along with Bill Wittliff’s photo series Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy on Saturday, April 17 from 7:00 to 9:30 p.m. There will be a public reception with Wittliff and a special program featuring Todd as the guest speaker. ¡Viva México! and Vaquero are running concurrently—admission to both shows and the April 17 event is free and open to the public. Event attendees are asked to RSVP to 512.245.2313 or thewittliffcollections@txstate.edu.

The more than 100 historical and modern, documentary and art photographs in ¡Viva México! interpret the country and testify to the vitality of vision and strength of subject captured by more than 40 artists who have trained their lenses on Mexico and her people. ¡Viva México! is part of the Texas and Mexico, 1810–2010 Commemoration at Texas State developed in partnership with the Mexican Consulate of Austin. Commemorative events are listed on Texas State’s calendar at www.txstate.edu and the Consulate’s at www.mexico2010austin.com.

Among the historical photographs on exhibit related to the Mexican Revolution is one of the most iconic: Generals Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, taken at the Palacio Nacional on December 6, 1914. Behind Zapata’s left shoulder in this photograph from the Casasola Archive is a boy named Leo Reynosa. In 1988, Dennis Darling created a portrait series of veterans of the Mexican Revolution, and one of the men featured is the very same Reynosa. In total, five of Darling’s hand-tinted veteran photographs are on view. Edward Larocque Tinker’s photographs of General Villa and General Álvaro Obregón are also part of the show.

Documentary and fine-art photographs broaden the scope of the show, as do the relationships of the photographers. “There has always been an elaborate and complex brotherhood,” said Todd, “among Mexican artists of many genres: literature, architecture, music, filmmaking, visual art—perhaps none more elaborate than that of the community of photographers. They mentor, they compete, they collaborate, they argue, they support… and so it is fitting that we see the connections between the artists in this exhibition.”

For example, among the highlights are photographs by Hugo Brehme, a recent gift from Susan Toomey Frost. Working in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Brehme is responsible for thousands of pictures of everyday Mexican life that have now become valuable anthropological documents. Mentored by Brehme, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, who interpreted the Mexican aesthetic for over 70 years, is also represented with a new acquisition, Maniquíes riendo/Laughing Mannequins. And appropriately, the artist who studied with him and has taken his place as the premier photographer in Mexico, and one of the world’s best—Graciela Iturbide—is in the show. In turn, the works of her acolyte, Maya Goded, are also on view.

“These essential social and artistic connections exist between almost every photographer in the show,” said Todd, “and they lend continuity and strength to the sum of all the works.”

In addition to those listed above, the distinguished list of photographers includes: Lola Álvarez Bravo, Yolanda Andrade, François Aubert, Lázaro Blanco, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Manuel Carrillo, Keith Carter, Henri Cartier-Bresson, John Christian, Marco Antonio Cruz, Faustinus Deraet, Héctor García, Flor Garduño, Guillermo Kahlo, Robb Kendrick, Nacho López, Luis Márquez, Eniac Martínez Ulloa, Francisco Mata Rosas, Tina Modotti / Edward Weston, Rodrigo Moya, Raúl Ortega, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, José Ángel Rodríguez, Josephine Sacabo, Sebastião Salgado, Paul Strand, Ángeles Torrejón, Antonio Turok, Bob Wade, C.B. Waite, Geoff Winningham, Bill Wittliff. and Mariana Yampolsky.

Music adds to the gallery experience: recordings of corridos (ballads) and other songs written during the Mexican Revolution play throughout the ¡Viva México! show.

The Casasola Archive also on exhibit at Texas State

May 19 through June 30, the School of Art & Design at Texas State will host Mexico, the Revolution and Beyond: The Casasola Archive, 1900-1940 in Gallery II of the Mitte Building. This traveling exhibition is sponsored by the Consulate of Mexico in Austin with partial funding from the Texas and Mexico, 1810-2010 Committee at Texas State. The opening reception for this show is May 22 from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. All are invited and welcome. For more information contact Gallery Coordinator Mary Mikel Stump at 512.245.2664.

INSTRUCTING | ILLUMINATING | INSPIRING

THE WITTLIFF COLLECTIONS offer a dynamic archival, exhibition, programming, and research environment designed to further the cultural legacy of the region’s literary and photographic arts, and foster “the spirit of place” in the wider world. THE SOUTHWESTERN WRITERS COLLECTION preserves and exhibits the literary papers and artifacts of principal writers, filmmakers, and musicians, including the major archives of Cormac McCarthy, Sam Shepard, and John Graves, as well as the production archives of Texas Monthly magazine, Fox’s animated series King of the Hill, and the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove. THE SOUTHWESTERN & MEXICAN PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION includes the major holdings of such renowned artists as Kate Breakey, Keith Carter, and Graciela Iturbide, and houses the largest archive of modern and contemporary Mexican photography in the United States. Connie Todd, Curator.