Brian Storm and Slavka GlaserPhoto by Clifford Pugh
Oscar Wyatt, left, Lynn Wyatt and Timothy WirthPhoto by Clifford Pugh
Wendy Watriss and Elisabeth BlondiPhoto by Clifford Pugh
Sissy Kempner and Carl PalazzoloPhoto by Clifford Pugh
FotoFest, the biennial extravaganza that brings top photographers from around the world to Houston, continued over the weekend as Brian Storm, the Emmy-award-winning founder of MediaStorm, led a workshop on multi-media storytelling. Storm uses audio, animation, still photographs and video to tell haunting stories on subjects ranging from genocide in Rwanda to a touching story of friendship between two elderly men.
With cameras and other equipment falling in price and the Internet available as a distribution tool, just about anyone with passion and a point of view can tackle subjects that the mainstream media ignores, Storm told an audience of photographers and journalists at the Doubletree Hotel at Allen Center.
"There are so many new opportunities for you to tell stories," Storm said.
On Sunday evening, Slavka Glaser opened her high-rise apartment near Hermann Park to welcome Storm and other FotoFest participants and supporters. A Mexican troubadour seranaded FotoFest co-founder Wendy Watriss as guests dined on Tex-Mex cuisine and admired the magnificent views at sunset.
In from Washington, D.C. were former Colorado Sen. Timothy Wirth, who now heads the United Nations Foundation, and his wife Wren. She is a lifelong friend of Watriss. At one point, Wirth was in deep conversation with Lynn and Oscar Wyatt, who looked remarkably fit after his stroke.
From New York: Elisabeth Biondi, visuals director at the New Yorker magazine, and Mac and Carter Wilcox, who were in Houston for the weekend to visit his parents, Marion and Benjamin Wilcox. Also on hand were Sanford and Susie Criner, Mimi Swartz and John Wilburn, Sissy and Denny Kempner, Mimi Kilgore, Vance Muse and artist Carl Palazzolo, who huddled with Texas Gallery owner Fredericka Hunter about his exhibition of paintings which opens at the gallery April 9.
