Houston Center for Photography
Houston Center for Photography will be open Early! 
Extended Hours Saturday, March 13: 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Regular Hours: Wed, Fri 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Thurs 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Sat & Sun 12noon – 6 p.m.
1441 West Alabama
Houston, TX 77006
p: 713-529-4755
On View March 12 – April 24, 2010:
Related by Anthony Goicolea
HCP´s Main Gallery features first generation Cuban-American Anthony Goicolea´s Related. The artist strings together a complex series of dialectics denoting the Cuban-American experience of assimilation and desire to maintain ancestral histories. The focal point for this body of work is Goicolea´s family: four generations of Cubans who fled for the U.S. in 1961. They exited their country with little more than photographs — studio portraits of relatives in their prime, wearing their Sunday best.
Using his family´s studio portraits as source material, Goicolea re-creates ties to his ancestors by forming a series of binaries that reference film-based wet photographic processes by re-drawing the portraits in negative and photographing them in positive. Following, Goicolea posts these images on telephone poles and trees amidst his family´s new environs in the southern U.S. It´s there that Goicolea´s experience of cultural dislocation manifests itself in the form of wanted ads or missing posters, as well as metaphors for Christ on the cross — an indication of his Catholic heritage.
RE: groups – American photographs before 1950 from Collections Blinde Pirate
W.M. Hunt will curate an exhibition of his recently formed personal collection of American groups in HCP´s X&Y galleries. This assemblage, known as collection Blind Pirate, has never been exhibited before and is at once a massive and eclectic collection representing various societies, clubs, schools, rallies, and posses that make up part of the history of 20th century America. This selection of photographs at HCP includes over 150 groups of people and speaks to the importance of group culture.
The exhibition Re: Groups — American photographs Before 1950 is curated by W.M. Hunt and features his personal collection, Blind Pirate. The exhibition is generously supported by Southern Union, Co. and the Brown Foundation, Inc.
Beatrix Reinhardt: Members Only – America
Social space — how we sculpt it, utilize it, and interrelate within it — is the subject of artist Beatrix Reinhardt´s work. While conducting a residency in Australia, Reinhardt took an interest in the world of private clubs, sites where social networking occurred. The East Germany-born artist was struck by how common it was for many Australians to embrace these institutions, often belonging to several clubs at once. Within the club environs are physical remnants of events past: trophies, carpet worn in a particular fashion marking the flow of human traffic, stacked metal chairs, team posters. The physicality of such spaces suggests the importance of “togetherness” – social landscapes where commonalities such as values, hobbies, ethnicities, and heritage unite individuals in celebration.
