On Friday, a new photographic exhibit, “Never Been to Houston,” opened at the Lawndale Art Center.
The gallery’s website describes the interesting premise behind the exhibit:
Imagine a city that you’ve only seen in reproductions or perhaps have merely heard about. A place, like many others, that exists only through rumors, stories, novels, the nightly news, magazines, movies and the Internet. Using these secondhand clues as firsthand research material, invited worldwide contributors-who have Never Been to Houston- will photographically document (without leaving home) what they imagine Houston to look like. Contributors will upload their photos daily to an on-line Flickr site, which will be projected as a slideshow in Houston’s Lawndale gallery. Anything that anyone might take a photograph of is fair game. Just as long as it feels like Houston.
The entire description is here, although it’s a bit wordy.
This is an utterly fascinating experiment, and I’m looking forward to taking in the exhibit. It will be interesting to see which photographers merely project silly stereotypes of Houston, and which photographers actually try to present Houston as Houston might present itself.
From the Chronicle coverage of the exhibit, I’m definitely drawn to this photographer:
Elena Perlino, a professional photographer in Saluzzo, Italy, became fascinated, as she researched the city online, with the gritty, urban side of the city — its immigrants, its minorities, its youth. In Italy and France, she shot photos that to a Houstonian look more like Houston than like Italy or France: a brown-skinned kid in a hoodie, surveying a wall of graffiti; three black-skinned guys in gimme caps, slumped in chairs in a white-walled room, waiting for something we don’t see.
“People in my pictures,” Perlino e-mailed, “are living in a place that doesn’t belong to them.” Such people look the same everywhere.
The Lawndale Art Center is on Main, in the museum district. This exhibit continues through April 14.
