Houston Center for Photography, Houston Arts Alliance, and the City of Houston Mayor´s Office of Cultural Affairs are pleased to present an exhibition of Houston and Texas artists. The nine individuals featured in this photographic exhibition at City Hall draw inspiration from the natural environment to make images. Varied in their approaches to their subject, each has a sensitivity towards the Earth and endeavors to capture glimpses of unfettered landscape in Texas and surrounding states.

Houston Center for Photography, Houston Arts Alliance, and the City of Houston Mayor´s Office of Cultural Affairs are pleased to present an exhibition of Houston and Texas artists. The nine individuals featured in this photographic exhibition at City Hall draw inspiration from the natural environment to make images. Varied in their approaches to their subject, each has a sensitivity towards the Earth and endeavors to capture glimpses of unfettered landscape in Texas and surrounding states.

Photographer and University of Houston physicist Kevin Bassler combines his love of science and natural forms in his images. His large-scale majestic scenes are captured from panoramic vantage points around the United States.

Chuy Benitez captures and contributes towards the sustainability of Chicano, Mexican, and Mexican American traditions. His panoramic images featured in the exhibition depict the Northern New Mexico landscape and the individuals who inhabit it. Benitez´s reflections of the Northern New Mexico climate are simple and thoughtful; they expose an arid landscape temporarily lush land following the monsoon-like rains in 2007. Recently, Chuy´s images were featured in Nueva Luz and SPOT magazines.

Artist Bevin Bering works in mixed media. Her unique treatment of the land is layered and complex, often bringing the details of her environs to the forefront of our attention. Bevin is the gallery director at Bering & James in Houston.

Peter Thomson Brown is one of Houston´s most celebrated photographers. His large-format color images of the Llano Estacado and the Plains hail from the documentary tradition of early color landscape photography. In concert with writer Kent Haruf, Peter won the 2005 Duke University Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize for the project High Plains. His work is featured in numerous museum collections. Peter´s most recent book, West of Last Chance, was published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 2008.

Inspired by the fictional dreams of Geppetto, Houstonian Shelley Calton photographed in Mexico, Los Lobos, and Carmel. She isolates the foreign landscape in her small scale black and white images to create nostalgic scenes. Shelley is the author of Hard Knocks: Rolling with the Derby Girls, published by Kehrer Verlag in 2009.

Third-generation photographer Mike Marvins from Houston is also a collector and scholar on the history of the medium. His sense for adventure led him to explore Big Bend, capturing the region with joyful immediacy. The images on view at City Hall are painterly in execution and are also featured in Marvins´s forthcoming book Texas´ Big Bend: A Photographic Adventure From The Pecos To The Rio Grande, published by Bright Sky Press in 2009.

Emerging Houstonian artist Teresa Munisteri creates beautiful self-portraits in Texas and Alabama. Often shooting at night, Teresa uses car headlights, flashlights, fireworks, and mercury-vapor lamps as light sources to illuminate the landscape and the human form. Her medium format color images are mysterious and thought provoking.

Angilee Wilkerson, a photographer based in Denton, TX aestheticizes the land around her home. Her delicate images featured in the exhibition were shot in the fading light during autumn months. Seed pods falling to the ground, grasses flattened by sleeping deer, and arabesque-shaped reeds bending in the wind reflect nature in transition.

Paul Zeigler is both a photographer and a poet. An avid adventurer, Paul and his family often visit Freeport in the wintertime. Walking along the surf line, Paul captured local happenings and items embedded in the sand on old Kodachrome film.

Landscapes: A Photography Exhibit by Houston and Texas Artists is on view at City Hall from August 6, 2009 to April 30, 2010. The project is sponsored by Houston Center for Photography, Houston Arts Alliance, and The Mayor´s Office of Cultural Affairs.