Where does the time go?

This past weekend the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston produced a panel discussion and exhibition about the "Houston Wilderness".

This is not a subject that many of us spend much time thinking about here in the 4th. largest metropolitan area in the country and with good reason. We have as much concrete as anyone could want and the idea of "Wilderness" is not easily seen while navigating the Houston locale.

Cllint Willour did a commendable job with at difficult subject, of hanging an exhibition of photographs. Over 60 images by about 25 different photographers.

Fortunately for me a friend came to town and we attended the event together. Robert's presence made the experience much more rewarding and interesting. Robert is one of the photographers whose work was selected for the show, he had 5 pictures selected by Willour.

All of which leads me to the point of this post.

With very few exceptions much of the work had a sameness that made it rather uninteresting.

Perhaps it's a fact that when trying to bring together work by many different artists much of the work begins to appear the same, maybe it's the taste of the person selecting the pictures or maybe it's the fact that we are all conditioned to react to what we see in much the same way.

With few exceptions none of the artists represented in the show really stood out as showing us something we hadn't seen already.

My friend Robert had some of the most original pictures of animals and in fact one of his pictures was the only one that drew an audible response from the audience when shown during the panel discussion.

Given that they only had one picture each in the show, Ann, Casey and Paul's pictures where some of the most original and unique and in my opinion, interesting.

Some of the work shown by the "famous" was derivative and predictable, while some of the pictures where just down right boring and dull.

But don't let my Monday morning second guessing talk you out of looking at the work, it was a good effort and a worthwhile attempt to raise awareness of a little known idea.

But now for the REAL reason I'm writing this morning. I'm going to try an break with the past and start posting to this site on a regular basis, at least once a week.

I'm aware that much of what I say will be of no interest to anyone but me and that's okay.
The act of doing it will help make it a habit and I hope that will help me spend more time thinking about and making photographs.