BRITISH JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Title: Six of the best
Feature: Photographer profile
Date: 3 May 2006

Houston FotoFest, the world's biggest portfolio review, happens once every two years. Bill Kouwenhoven was there in March to ask six reviewers for their top picks

Once every two years in March, the Houston FotoFest blooms into life. Now in its 24th year, it was created by ex-photojournalists Fred Baldwin and Wendy Watriss, modelled on the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, the mother of all photography festivals, and the Mois de la Photo a Paris, a series of themed photography exhibitions. Thus FotoFest combines intense review sessions for photographers with a panoply of shows illustrating a single theme.

More than 300 photographers from some 20 countries registered for the 20-minute, 'speed date' style reviews, paying $700 each for an average of five reviews a day for four days. Many other photographers also loitered around the 'Meeting Place' in the hope of buying a review day from a burnt-out photographer, or just joining in with the general ambiance.

At every FotoFest, a selection of 10 photographers 'discovered' by reviewers at the previous biennial is exhibited. This year, BJP has selected its own 'discoverers' from the reviewer panel, and asked them to give a more immediate assessment of their personal favourites.

We picked six reviewers from across the industry and around the world, and as FotoFest stretches across almost two weeks, we picked reviewers from each of the three reviewing periods to ensure that all photographers had an equal chance of discovery.

Roy Flukinger on Dan Nelken

Roy Flukinger of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin, was also overwhelmed by the quality of work he encountered. After much deliberation, he settled on New York State-based Dan Nelken for his work Till the Cows Come Home, a selection of county fair portraits and scenes from upstate New York. This series, he says, is 'one of those rare bodies of work that combines a surface ease of viewing with a passionate depth of character'.

He added: 'Nelken's images are seemingly direct and uncomplicated portraits of the participants in some of the thousands of county fairs that make up American rural life. Do not be fooled. Look deeper, past their record of faces and animals and through their delightful wit, and you will be moved by the spirit of these participants and the complexity of the seemingly simple events in which they are engaged.

'There is a lyrical artistry at work in this most commonplace social and agricultural enterprise, and Nelken makes us aware of it many times over. Nelken unerringly depicts the profound humanity that binds us all and, at our core, commits us all to life itself. It is a universal affirmation that has blessed the works of photographers as disparate as Bill Brandt, Eve Arnold, or Eugene Richards.'
 

CONTACTS - REVIEWERS

Roy Flukinger, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas - www.hrc.utexas.edu/collections/photography
 

CONTACTS - PHOTOGRAPHERS

Dan Nelken - www.dannelken.com

Reproduced with the kind permission of © Incisive Media Investments Ltd 2006