I am honored that the above print is included in the Selects 2025 exhibition which will open this month at the Atlanta Photography Group gallery.

The exhibition was curated by Arpad Kovacs who is associate curator in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Kovacs selected 30 photographs for the Selects 2025 Exhibition.

All work in this exhibition will be considered for the APG/Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Purchase Award, a $3,000 prize which is made possible through a generous grant from Edwin Robinson and Julin Maloof, in honor of Gloria and Ted Maloof. Lisa Volpe, Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will make the decision for the museum purchase award.

The Image

This image is from my Eaton Fire Portfolio which I began on January 7th this year. This is the second time I have exhibited this image in print form and the four time this year I have exhibited a photograph from my Eaton Fire Portfolio.

I was in Pasadena, where I grew up, the night the devastating Eaton Canyon Fire began. I smelled the smoke from the fire before I could see the flames and when I first saw the fire it was raging. I have written a lot about this portfolio on my website and in this blog, so I won’t repeat too much about it here. It was a devastating fire that killed at least 19 people and destroyed over 9,000 homes. I have continued photographing the area since the night of the fire to document the impact on the community and the massive scope of the damage.

This photograph is of the Altadena Community Church which is near the intersection of Lake Avenue and Altadena Drive, arguably the center of the city. Many businesses near this intersection were lost but the entire Southwest corner was spared. For me there are lots of layers of information in this image. A destroyed church represents the impact to the community as a whole. I love the fact the archway stood strong and was such a powerful element in the image (it was just razed within the last week), and the mountain (where the fire started) are an important element. The image encompasses a lot about the fire. I photographed this church several times over the past six months, as have other photographers, but I have not seen any other photographs of the church as powerful as this image. The key is the lighting; I photographed this image on February 18th when the sun was further south and still shone on the face of the building. I also made the exposure around sunset when the colors came through. A month later the sun was further north in the sky and the light was not hitting the face of the building during sunset.

July 29, 2025 - The Altadena Community Church lot. The facade had been razed within the last week. (DSC 3666)

The Print:

The exhibition print has an image size of 24” x 16” which is the largest sized exhibition print I have produced so far in an edition (I have produced some larger prints for commercial clients). This print is on a sheet of 26” x 18” Hahnemȕhle Photo Rag Ultrasmooth paper, framed with a window matt to an external size of approximately 31” x 27”. The print has an edition of 9 for this image size.

The print was made, and framed by, by Digital Arts Studio in Atlanta who I have been using to produce all my large print editions. Owner Barry Glustoff is fantastic to work with and his lab is one of the top certified printers of Canson and Hahnemȕhle papers in the world.

I would also like to showcase four other photographs in the exhibition which stood out to me:

I went into my favorite hometown bookstore, Vroman’s in Pasadena, on Monday for something and before I left, I checked out the Photography section for any new book arrivals. I was surprised to see they already had a copy of America and Other Myths - Photographs by Robert Frank and Todd Webb, 1955 so I grabbed it. I follow the author, Lisa Volpe so I knew the exhibition was opening at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and that the book/exhibition catalogue had just been released. I thought Vroman’s might get the book in stock before the end of the year, but I never expected to see it on their shelf within two weeks of its release. I like to support Vroman’s because they are independent, and they took care of me when I released my first book.

The exhibition, and this accompanying catalogue, compare the work of photographers Todd Webb and Robert Frank who received separate Guggenheim Fellowships in 1955 to document the United States. Robet Frank’s photographs were published in book form in France in 1958 then in the US in 1960. The book, The Americans, is arguably one of the most iconic photography books of all time. Webb’s 1955 photographs were not widely seen and were basically lost for some time before being rediscovered in a collector’s basement. In 2017 Webb’s 1955 photographs were obtained by Todd Webb’s Archive which began the archiving process of the images. Curator Lisa Volpe became aware of the Webb photographs around the time they made it to the Webb Archive and then had the vision to curate this exhibition comparing Webb’s unknown work Frank’s iconic body of work.

I became familiar with the Lisa Volpe, who is the Associate Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts - Houston, a year ago when she selected two of my photographs for an exhibition in Atlanta. During the submission process I researched Lisa online and found a couple videos of her talking about photography. Lisa has so much passion for photography and that energy comes across when she talks about the medium. I have followed her ever since.

I have seen Lisa’s recent posts about the exhibition America and Other Myths and the pending release of book/exhibition catalogue. The concept and images looked so fantastic that I have even been considering a trip to Houston to see it. I don’t know if I will make that happen but at least I have a copy of the book know so I know how good this exhibition probably is. But this post is a book review so let me get on with that.

Review of the Book:

The book was published by Yale University Press in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. As stated above the author is Lisa Volpe - Associate Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts - Houston. The book was released this month and contains 184 Pages, is 10.00” x 10.70”, has 115 duotone images, and was printed in China. Directors’ Forwards were provided by Gary Tinterow - Director, The Margaret Alkek Williams Chair - The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Betsy Evan Hunt - Executive Director of the Todd Webb Archive. Novelist and Professor Susan Straight provided the afterword.

The book is outstanding in every aspect. The design is obviously the first impression with any book. I love the cover image; it represents what it to come well and I like the font selection. The book is a really good size, you can hold it easily if you are lounging, so it has intimacy, but the book is also a little bigger than some other books which allows the images to be bigger so you can see more details in the image reproductions. The duotone printing is very good, the images are beautiful, and the printing quality also helps with seeing the image details. I absolutely love the page design where the image information is on the same page as the photograph, in a font that is easy to read but does not interfere with the experience of looking at the image. I made a point to do the same thing with my Santa Anita book because I always hate hunting through the back of the book to find the information about an image. With the writings, the text spacing is good, the font size is easy to read, and it has a nice font style.

There is an incredible amount of written information in this book. I don’t mean there is page upon page of reading to do to get through before seeing the photographs, that would have been a negative for me. What I mean is everyone who contributed text wrote in a way to share interesting facts about the photographers and their journeys in a wonderfully entertaining, clear, and concise manner. I obviously just brought this book home and have only read the introductions and skimmed the other text, but even with that I have learned so much about both photographers that I never knew. The story of how Webb’s 1955 photographs were rescued from a basement and preserved before ultimately being shared with the world now is amazing. The in-depth examination of both photographers and how they approached their Guggenheim projects is incredible. I look forward to spending a lot more time with this book to learn even more. Volpe’s writing style conveys her passion for the project and Susan Straight’s afterword is a nice compliment to the images and is very appropriate. Normally I wouldn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the Bibliography, Index, and Credits but again there is so much good information here about the images and the exhibition it is worth noting. Lisa and her team documented everything about this project, she could have been a good Detective with her skillset.

The image selection and the sequencing in the catalogue are again, outstanding. I have really started paying attention to how curators edit then hang their exhibitions over recent years. The curator’s process is often far more creative than the average museum visitor realizes. The pairings in the book are interesting, they work, and again I like being able to glance down to see which photographer created each image. Like most photographers, I was well aware of Robert Frank’s work in the exhibition, and I always find value in revisiting it. Like the rest of the world, except those involved in this project, I had never seen this body of Webb’s work before. In reading the descriptions in the book it appears that most all of Webb’s prints in the exhibition are Inkjet Prints printed this year. I assume that means Lisa and Betsy had to go through negatives and digitize images as part of the curatorial process. If so that makes the accomplishment of this exhibition even more impressive.

Image Showcase:

This photograph above of a barber in New Mexico has been on my mind ever since I saw it. The light in this image is amazing, as was Webb’s ability to capture it. I don’t know if there are words good enough to describe the quality of this image, this image doesn’t need words. Thank you, Lisa, for including it.

Two of my photographs compared two images from the book:

William Karl Valentine - NY-061 #07 9/5/00

Todd Webb - 1955

William Karl Valentine - CA-087 #17 5/29/95

Robert Frank - 1956

I had learned from Szarkowski’s book on Garry Winogrand that both Winogrand and Robert Frank had photographed the Father Serra statue in Los Angeles, even though all of them thought the statue was of Saint Francis. Because I knew they both had photographed something close to home, in 1995, I decided to search for the statue and also photograph it. I have written a previous blog post about all that whole process and how the statue had been moved. In September of 2000, almost exactly one year before the attack on the World Trade Center, I was in New York and captured the image above from the Empire State Building. At the time the person looking up at the claw railing had good value but after the attacks the the image became more powerful, and deeper for me. I don’t ever recall seeing Webb’s photograph from my exact same vantage point before, so I was excited to discover this image in the book this week, immediately realizing we had been in the same spot, just 45 years apart. I always find it interesting when I have the opportunity to photograph somewhere, or something, that a great photographer has. There is a unique connection and I like comparing the changes over time, or the lack of changes; it can be fascinating.

Conclusion:

If you like photography books you will love adding this book to your collection. For the $50 price, it is a great value. Every time you revisit this book you can come away with new experiences and knowledge, it truly is outstanding.

Additional Information:

Yale Press had links to a half hour podcast of Lisa Volpe being interviewed about the book which was fantastic as well as a half minute You Tube video of page turns showing off the book. Links are below.

Review of the Book:

Image Showcase:

Two of my photographs compared two images from the book:

Conclusion:

Additional Information:

Lisa Volpe - Yale podcast interview about the exhibition

Yale Press - You Tube book reveal (less than 30 seconds)

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