HOUSTON, TX - Houston Center for Photography is proud to announce an exhibition of work, Home Stills, by photographer Bastienne Schmidt. The exhibition will be on view in HCP's Galleries X & Y from March 9 - April 22, 2012 with an artist talk at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 15, preceding the opening reception.

Like Jack Kerouac in On the Road or Travis Henderson in Wim Wender’s Paris, Texas, Bastienne Schmidt’s character roams America’s suburban terrain. She demurely shields her face from the camera’s gaze, tempting us to daydream about her inner thoughts while we participate as curious onlookers in her journeys. We travel through Schmidt’s deadpan cinematic vignettes with an anonymous feminine creature who is forever discovering her local environs. In her series, Home Stills, Schmidt explores the ethos of America in relationship to nature, as well as American culture’s traditional and contemporary gender roles. In some photographs, Schmidt actualizes the yearnings for freedom of the foreigner who once wandered America before the onset of family duty. Introducing family into later scenes, Schmidt portrays life further along in the cycle of womanhood – seeking to find her purpose as a housewife through controlled experiments performed and photographed within her home.

Bastienne Schmidt was born in Munich, Germany and studied art, painting and photography in Germany and Italy after studying anthropology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich. She lived and worked for many years in Greece and Italy before moving to New York, where she is now based. Schmidt’s art and photography have been widely published and exhibited throughout the US and internationally including at the National Museum for Photography, TV and Broadcasting in Bradford; the Brooklyn Museum, the New Museum and the International Center of Photography in New York; FotoFest, Houston; Musée de la Photographie à Charleroi, Belgium; Museum of Photography, Rotterdam and the Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow.

Special thanks to our friends who have helped support this exhibition:  The Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation, Joan Morgenstern, and Ed Osowski.

EXHIBITIONS ON VIEW AND RELATED PROGRAMMING

The Power of Now and Other Tales from Home - Julie Blackmon - HCP’s Main Gallery, March 9 - April 22, 2012

Home Stills - Bastienne Schmidt - HCP’s Gallery X/Y, March 9 - April 22, 2012

Color Falls Down - Priya Kambli - HCP’s Learning Center Gallery, March 9 - April 22, 2012

Opening Reception for all three exhibitions at HCP, Thursday, March 15, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.

Artist Talks: Beginning at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 15

The FotoFest 2012 Biennial, March 16–April 29, 2012, is the 14th International Biennial of Photography and Photo-related Art. The 2012 edition is titled “Contemporary Russian Photography,” and spans the late 1950s to the present. The United States’ largest and longest-running international photography festival, FotoFest is also one of the oldest international showcases for photography in the world. FotoFest 2012 features photography and mixed-media exhibitions, an international portfolio review for artists, evenings for art collectors, opportunities