Fotofest 2012

The story behind FotoFest: How a "poke" in the ground led to the largestinternational photography festival in America

FotoFest 1992 Biennial at the George R. Brown Convention Center
Fred Baldwin and Wendy Watriss editing slides in their home dark-room in 1981,soon after their arrival in Houston
FotoFest co-founders Fred Baldwin and Wendy Watriss installing an exhibitionduring the first FotoFest in 1986
Fred Baldwin in China for the FotoFest Meeting Place Beijing 2007
In 1994 at the George R. Brown Convention Center, FotoFest staged the firstpublic exhibition in decades of the “first photograph” by Niecephore Niepce. Thepiece was transported from the Ransom Center in Austin in an armored car and wasaccompanied by armed guards.
Wendy Watriss and master Czech photographer Pavel Banka in 2004
Wendy Watriss, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C., 1983-1986, silvergelatin print
Photo by Wendy Watriss
While photographing rural Texas counties for their book, Fred Baldwin and WendyWatriss lived in a small trailer towed by Fred’s Mercedes convertible and parkedoften in an obliging farmer’s pasture, 1971-1972. Here, they parked along sidethe road in rural Grimes County, Texas.

Editor's Note: As the 14th FotoFest Biennial gets underway, we asked co-founder Fred Baldwin to reminisce on how it got started.

When Wendy Watriss came to Houston in 1980, we had a choice — go back to New York and finish the book we had done on the Texas Hill Country or find a place to live in Texas where we could finish our work. We knew Dominique de Menil because she had given us an exhibition at her museum at Rice in 1975, prior to building the current Menil Collection. She offered to rent us one of her houses across from the Rothko Chapel.

We accepted and moved in. It's been home ever since. Wendy continued freelancing and I became a professor at the University of Houston teaching photojournalism.

Wendy was the first woman to win the World Press Prize and the Oskar Barnack Award for a photo essay in Life magazine on Agent Orange in 1982. We went to Amsterdam to receive Wendy's prize from Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands and later were later invited to the world's first photography festival the Arles Rencontre in the south of France. There we met a lot of old friends and participated in an informal portfolio review that resulted in exhibits, assignments and print sales.

This informal, delightful experience was special to Arles at that time and sparked an idea that changed our lives. Coming home on the plane we thought, "Why don't we do something like this in the U.S., in Houston?"

Shortly thereafter, we learned that in 1980, the Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac had created Le Mois de la Photo, a citywide exhibition of photography held every two years in all the museums and art spaces owned by the city of Paris. We combined ideas from Arles and Paris to create what would eventually become FotoFest.

Apart from our collaboration with Dominique de Menil, Wendy and I were newcomers to Houston but we came with a network of national and international relationships, and this was Houston. We proceeded by drawing on lessons that we had learned surviving as international freelance photographers.

We developed relationships, thought out of the box, took risks and worked very hard. It turned out we were in the right place. Houston was a city where early entrepreneurs learned to poke holes in the ground — a million dollars a poke until they went broke or became multi-millionaires.

Entrepreneurial ideas were welcome in Houston. To launch our idea and become better known, we drew on our main resource – worldwide contacts with photographers and international experience. We teamed up with German gallery owner Petra Benteler and began looking for colleagues who we thought might be delighted with the outsized Texas spirit.

We rounded up Ikko Narahara (Japan), Franco Fontana (Italy), William Klein (Paris), and Helmut Newton (Monaco) to photograph Houston's Livestock Show and Rodeo. We provided air tickets and found places for them to stay. Newton created a social stampede.

Wendy and I and the other photographers followed a platoon of TV cameras and society reporters from one dinner party to the next for two weeks. Their photography was also a huge success and we donated the results of this extravaganza to the Museum of Fine Arts. That was our first "poke" in the ground.

Poke two: Impress the French

Poke two was designed along different lines. We invited Jean-Luc Monterosso, the director of the Month of Photography to come to Houston to describe what he was doing in Paris to possible funders. There was one problem. We didn't know a lot of businessmen, foundations executives or city officials. However, this was Houston.

Wendy and I got on the phone and called Mayor Kathy Whitmire and Councilwoman Eleanor Tinsley, Roy Cullen and developer John Hansen, explaining that Paris had a good idea and they needed to know about it because it was good for the city.

When Monterosso returned to Paris he was convinced that we lived in a city where streets were paved in gold and that we were major power players.

When Monterosso arrived he was given the keys to the city by the mayor. Tinsley hosted a luncheon and our new business friends listened with interest. When Monterosso returned to Paris he was convinced that we lived in a city where streets were paved in gold and that we were major power players.

Poke three: Winning a grant

There was one last hole to poke in the ground. We used our remaining overburdened credit card to give a cocktail party at the Meridian Hotel (now Doubletree) for 400 prestigious guests and the Consular Corps. Mayor Chirac sent a congratulatory telegram. Thirty days after our American Express bill arrived, FotoFest received its first grant from the Wortham Foundation, and we didn't go broke or land in jail.

This is the background that made the first FotoFest possible and it couldn't have happened anywhere except Houston. The first Biennial was huge with 61 exhibits and two weeks of free portfolio reviews of artists' work by prominent curators. Local, national and international press coverage was enthusiastic. Newsweek, the Boston Globe, Japanese TV, the BBC, Italian and Finish radio, among others covered the first international photography festival in the USA.

The 14th FotoFest opens today and, like Houston, it's much more sophisticated than it was in 1986. Also like Houston, we have worldwide influence in our field; we have launched thousands of artists and broken new ground all over the world by being involved with and traveling to over 50 countries since 1986.

This Biennial features Russian photography and we are also bringing 30 Russian artists and cultural leaders to Houston, using the occasion to collaborate with the Russian American Chamber of Commerce and the mayor's office to assure that cultural and business opportunities will be added to the mix. We feel that future entrepreneurial pokes needs to be more sophisticated in the future, utilizing the city's considerable cultural assets from all the arts to enhance Houston's reputation.

On a recent trip to New York, a top gallery director dealing with high-end art photography, said that Houston is now considered to be second only to New York in this area due to Anne Tucker's extraordinary successes at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and our founding of FotoFest. This would have been unimaginable in 1986.

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A-list treatment

Luxe plastic surgery center injects River Oaks with cutting-edge techniques, posh recovery suites, secret access, and more

Photo courtesy of Nuveau PlasticSurgery + Medical Aesthetics

Nuveau's sleek River Oaks center boasts designs from CASA.

With the holiday season in full swing and many prepping for a new look for the new year, image-conscious Houstonians have a new option for cutting-edge cosmetic treatments and plastic surgery in one of Houston’s most elite neighborhoods.

Nuveau Plastic Surgery + Medical Aesthetics, a local leader in cosmetic medical procedures, has quietly opened a sleek new facility in River Oaks (3720 Westheimer Rd.). Owned and operated by renowned (and board-certified) plastic surgeon Dr. Edward Lee, the facility offers myriad reconstructive surgeries for men, women, and children, as well as beauty treatments, touch-ups, and more.

Aside from top-of-the-line technology, instrumentation, and treatments, the boutique center has personalized service and features to the tony RO crowd. A secret entrance ensures privacy for discreet clients, much like similar operations in Los Angeles and New York.

Another top-drawer feature: Tastefully appointed pre-op and post-op suites keep patients in-house, rather than having to leave posh treatment centers and head to crowded hospital rooms for recovery.

In keeping with Lee’s insistence on a medicine-first approach, anesthesia for patients is provided by Medical Anesthesia Associates, an MD-only group.

A cut above

Notably, the center places a primary focus on plastic surgery, which, for the uninitiated, has a clear distinction from cosmetic surgery. Randy Rakes, managing partner, tells CultureMap that it’s important for clients to understand the difference.

“You have to understand, you have to go through hundreds of hours of training and cases — face and the entire body — to get that board certification, and go through rigorous testing in order to meet that specification,” he says.

Why is that important? The industry, Rakes notes, is rife with practitioners such as “OBGYNs or dermatologists or people who have not really been trained in the art of plastic surgery, who take a class somewhere and learn how to do liposuction or a fat transfer — and then they're ‘experts’ in aesthetic surgery.”

That’s especially key when selecting a provider for highly invasive — and potentially serious — procedures such as facelifts, eyelid surgeries, tummy tucks, liposuction, rhinoplasty, breast lifts and augmentations, breast reconstruction, and more, Rakes adds.

In an era of Instagram beauty demands, more choosy clients are opting for streamlining facial features. To that end, Lee is one of a select few surgeons in the U.S. who regularly performs “V-Line '' surgery. The set of procedures, popularized in South Korea where Lee honed many of his skills, aim to narrow the width of the jawline and the face.

Aesthetics with an expert eye

Lee’s elegant, 5,500-square-foot center is adorned with CASA Houston designs, Italian-influenced finishes, and soothing elements evocative of a modern art museum or luxury spa. The facility houses a Visia Skin Analysis Studio and seven treatment suites aesthetic work such as Botox, microneedling, VI peels, Halo Laser Resurfacing, Moxi Non-Ablative Laser, Broad Band Light Photofacials, Coolsculpting, Emsculpt, and more.

Rakes says that his registered nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and estheticians are elite, by design, as he and Lee insist on credentials. “All of our injectors are licensed in the State of Texas,” he says. “Most places don't have that, the reason being is that they are much more highly skilled than a traditional, regular nurse injector. So they have a much higher skill set. The people who do our lasers and things of that nature have 10 to 15 years of experience, so clients know that they're getting the best possible treatment with the best possible devices — we own every medical device that's considered cutting edge in the industry.”

Facing forward

Rakes, a longtime medical industry processional with a keen eye for trends and technology, says that his clients aren’t just looking for traditional services, but new technologies and treatment, such as PRP and other regenerative therapies. “I think patients are kind of moving a little bit away from the traditional Hyaluronic fillers like Restylane and really looking for something with a more natural approach.”

His treatment teams stimulate collagen with fillers such as Radiesse, “and then we combine that with energy-based devices to even further lift the tissue and work as a synergy between using the injectable and the device, because the combination of both of those things give the patient the best possible results,” Rakes notes. Lee and Rakes also focus facial care on medical-grade skincare brands Alastin, Revision, and Elta MD.

A global scope

Aside from his board certification in plastic surgery, Lee has also trained in craniofacial and pediatric surgery. His medical mission work has taken him to Thailand, Haiti, and Cambodia, where he has performed surgeries for nonprofits such as Operation Smile and Smile Train for those in need.

Those in need of non-traditional treatments can also trust Lee, says Rakes, who points to Lee’s work in the cosmetic and plastic surgery-obsessed Korea. “Some of the Korean techniques are much more advanced than the techniques that are available here in the United States,” says Rakes. “Dr. Lee does a lot of things that other physicians here just don't do.”

Those interested should book early, Rakes advises, as the holiday and new year rush is in full swing. The center offers “pre-buying” slots where clients can reserve space and time. “We’ve been very busy,” says Rakes, noting the local celebs who’ve shared the work they’ve received there on social media. “I think people come here because they know they’re getting the very best treatment and results available.”

Nuveau Plastic Surgery + Medical Aesthetics River Oaks Houston

Photo courtesy of Nuveau PlasticSurgery + Medical Aesthetics

Nuveau's sleek River Oaks center boasts designs from CASA.