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Houston's picture-perfect FotoFest returns with a showcase of can't-miss, cutting-edge works

Don't miss Jakayla Monay's Houston-centric works.

One of the city’s preeminent cultural and visual arts offerings is back after a reimagining during the pandemic.

FotoFest, Houston's all-encompassing, biennial showcase of timely, socially relevant photography, officially launches its 2022 Biennial Saturday, September 24, with an impressive array of events including a swanky gala and reception, exhibit unveilings, and more.

The organization, dedicated to showcasing the best in photography and visual culture, produces and sponsors a number of exhibitions across the city. The Biennial is on view from September 24 through November 6 at Sawyer Yards and a host of other participating venues and offers compelling exhibits and other programming.

The central exhibition, "If I Had A Hammer," explores how artists around the world capture the essence of cultural movements. These works showcase how people of all ideologies come together, resisting and replacing the legacies of colonialism and imperialism.

On Saturday, September 24, visitors can head to Silver Street Studios for the FotoFest Biennial 2022 grand opening. From 8 to 11 pm, guests can meet the artists and curators behind the central exhibition, "If I Had A Hammer," along with the concurrent exhibitions "African Cosmologies: Redux" (a must-see) and "Ten by Ten," a curated showcase of cutting-edge works. (One "Ten by Ten" standout is artist Zana Briski, who works patiently on moonless nights to capture wild animals in Animalograms, making exposures of them directly onto large sheets of photographic paper.) It’s also an opportunity to be among the first to see these important works from talented artists.

Bearogram Zana Briski Zana Briski cleverly captures wild animals in Animalograms.ZanaBriski.com

Those looking for a more in-depth understanding of these works should take part in some of FotoFest’s programming offerings on Sunday, September 25. These include a curatorial walkthrough of "If I Had A Hammer," where co-curators Steven Evans, Max Fields, and Amy Sadao will discuss each of the included artists and highlight several pieces. In addition, several featured artists will be there to talk about their approach to their art and answer questions.

That evening features a performance of DASH by Ho Rui An, which opens with footage of an accident captured by a dashboard camera.

Thursday, September 29’s Fine Print Auction at the Whitehall Houston Hotel gives guests the opportunity to bid on museum-quality prints from some of the world’s finest contemporary photographers. This fundraiser is essential to the ongoing programming that FotoFest provides, giving photography lovers an incentive to take home gorgeous works and support a great cause.

Art lovers and observers of global cultural contexts and piercing socio-political will find much to celebrate and ponder in all of FotoFest Biennial 2022’s offerings, which remind that some pictures truly are worth a thousand words.

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Global stars and best sellers headline 3-day Houston cultural 'bonanza' of literature and film

Mira Nair/Facebook

Acclaimed director Mira Nair (left, pictured with Richard Gere and Hillary Swank while shooting Amelia) will discuss her career on Saturday.

Literature lovers are going to swoon over this weekend's JLF Houston, a three-day event September 15 to 17, with happenings at Asia Society Texas, the University of Houston, Rothko Chapel and the Eternal Gandhi Museum. Back for its sixth annual outing, the Houston event brings an array of high-level creative talent to the Bayou City.

"This weekend JLF Houston brings to our city world-class writers as well as spotlighting Houston's own artists," Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, the best-selling author of The Mistress of Spices and The Forest of Enchantments, and a teacher in the University of Houston's highly regarded creative writing program, tells CultureMap.

"The festival enriches our cultural landscape with multi-cultural discussions ranging from India's freedom struggle and how it affected women to current-day challenges in Ukraine to cutting-edge astronomical discoveries. I hope Houstonians will make full use of this the-day bonanza, which also presents music and film and is followed each day by receptions where one can chat up-close with the presenters."

Look for an opening reception Friday evening at the University of Houston, which follows the festival's kickoff panel, "Ukraine: The Cost of War."

Saturday, September 16 is a day of presentations, panels, readings and discussions by some of the greatest names in books in movies. Taking place at Asia Society Houston and hosted jointly by Inprint, Asia Society and Teamwork Arts, the event is modeled after India's Jaipur Literature Festival, one of the world's most-renowned gatherings of authors, filmmakers and lovers of the written word.

Salaam! Mira Nair, Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni, and more

The day begins award-winning film-maker Mira Nair, known for movies like Mississippi Masala and Monsoon Wedding, in conversation with Sanjoy K. Roy, Teamwork Arts' managing director. Nair will discuss her cinematic language, the vocabulary of the moving image, and her special affinity for literary adaptation, including Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake.

Up next is the panel "Forbidden Pages: Banned, Burned and Censored." The ACLU Texas' Oni K. Blair, The Aztec Love God author Tony Diaz, and journalist, editor and chair of PEN International Writers in Prison chair Salil Tripathi are in conversation with retired HISD librarian Dorcas Hand. They'll talk about the rationale behind movements to ban books, and how ideas still thrive in the end.

Mira Nair/Facebook

Acclaimed director Mira Nair (left, pictured with Richard Gere and Hillary Swank while shooting Amelia) will discuss her career on Saturday.

In the first panel of the afternoon, "The Personal and the Political," award winning journalist Anjan Sundaram discusses his recent memoir, Breakup: A Marriage in Wartime, with Tripathi. The book explores the toll being a war correspondent takes on marriage, and how the scenes they bear witness to expose humanitarian crimes across the world.

Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni talks about decolonization and the devastating consequences of Partition, which form the backdrop of her latest novel, Independence, a sweeping saga of India in the last days of British rule, told from the intertwined perspectives of three sisters. She's in conversation with Pakistani-American writer and Gulf Coast Journal fiction editor Tayyba Maya Kanwal.

A Journey Through the Cosmos, Bandit Queens, and world peace

Additional sessions include Priyamvada Natarajan, a professor in Yale's department of physics and astronomy discusses her book, Mapping the Heavens: A Journey Through the Cosmos with Sanjoy K. Roy. Houston’s sixth Poet Laureate Aris Kian Brown, Nepali-Indian poet and writer Rohan Chhetri, and Assamese writer and poet Aruni Kashyap are in conversation with academic Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan.

Parini Shroff, author of The Bandit Queens, and Aruni Kashyap, author There is No Good Time for Bad News, His Father's Disease, and The House With a Thousand Stories will talk with academic and writer Mohan Ambikaipaker about the plurality of identity and a sense of belonging found in stories and poems by South Asian writers in the United States.

The day concludes with an author reception where participants can meet and greet the writers and presenters. More information is on the Asia Society Texas website.

To mark the beginning of World Peace Week, Sunday's sessions begin at the Rothko Chapel with music and a poetry reading. Salil Tripathi and Sita Kapadia are in conversation about "The Gandhis: The Story of Ba and Bapu" Sunday afternoon at the Eternal Gandhi Museum.

Tickets, registration and additional details can be found online. While many events are free of charge with registration, Saturday's sessions at Asia Society are $20 for a full-day pass.