I am extremely honored to announce that Dr. Rebecca Senf from the Center of Creative Photography has selected the above photograph for exhibition in the Houston Center for Photography’s 42nd Annual Center Exhibition. It opens Thursday June 12, 2025, and closes on Sunday August 17th, 2025.

My Eaton Fire Portfolio began on January 7th, 2025, when a fire started in Eaton Canyon (above Pasadena and East of Altadena) and quickly spread because of unusually high winds. I have chronicled details in previous blog posts and my web page for the portfolio. I knew right away I was witnessing something historic, and I felt compelled to document it. I was initially focused on the fire and the destruction but as I have returned over 25 different days since the fire I find I am document more individual loss and how people are dealing with the aftermath. I also soon recognized the destructive nature of the fire left behind many forms and shapes that were beautiful and often powerful. In January I was already taking notice of the frames within a frame caused by the fire. The image above is from a home in the Jane’s Village neighborhood of Altadena. The diamond shape to the right was a window that burned away allowing the viewer to see the brick fireplace. The rectangles on the left side of the image are a covered porch, a front window and a rear window. The exposure was around sunset causing the hue cast. What remains of the home address numbers are the black or grey blobs to the lower left of the diamond window as you face it. Altadena is a wonderfully eclectic and diverse community covering 12 square miles North of the City of Pasadena. Altadena lost over 9,000 structures in the fires.

The Center Annual is Houston Center for Photography’s yearly group exhibition that seeks to highlight and provide insight into current themes, technologies, and practices in photography. This year’s exhibition features 47 diverse works from members of our global photography community and was selected by a Dr. Rebecca Senf who is Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. Her B.A. in Art History is from the University of Arizona; her M.A. and Ph.D. were awarded by Boston University. In 2012, her book Reconstructing the View: The Grand Canyon Photographs of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe was released by University of California Press; in 2017, her book To Be Thirteen, showcasing the work of Betsy Schneider, was published by Radius Press and Phoenix Art Museum. She has curated fifty exhibitions, including her recent Richard Avedon: Relationships which was shown in Milan and Palermo, Italy and Rotterdam, in The Netherlands, and has contributed chapters, interviews, and essays to over a dozen publications. Senf is an Ansel Adams scholar, and in 2020 released a book on Adams’s early years, called Making a Photographer, copublished by the CCP and Yale University Press, now in a second printing.

Dr. Senf & CCP’s recent Instagram post: “Picture Party: Celebrating the Collection at 50,” on view through December 20, 2025, at CCP’s Alice Chaiten Baker Interdisciplinary Gallery.

The Houston Center for Photography galleries are always free and open to the public.

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Brent Valentine and Keller Kramer are seniors at UC Davis. In March 2023 Brent came up with an idea to start a podcast series where he interviewed professors about their research projects so future graduate students could learn more about programs, they were interested in applying to. Keller is one of Brent’s closest friends and had experience interviewing people. They discussed the concept and created the Discovering Academia Podcast. UC Davis featured them in their campus magazine, check here for that link. Below is their official description of their podcast has become:

Discovering Academia is an interdisciplinary podcast, with some of the world’s greatest thinkers and researchers. Brent and Keller sit down with these academics to have conversations about their background, research, passions and ways for others to get involved. Episodes last for roughly an hour, and they cover a plethora of topics. We launched in March 2023 and are now releasing weekly episodes. We started at our home institution, UC Davis, and have expanded to the London School of Economics, Utrecht University, UC Berkley, University of Geneva, National University of Singapore, University of Hong Kong, Nankai University*, and Zhejiang A&F University* (*Mainland China)

If you had not guessed by now, Brent is my son. We made an investment to help Brent create the podcast as an actual business, and during that process one condition I asked Brent to agree to was to include some photography related podcasts and I specifically suggested interviewing Becky Senf. I have gotten to know Becky fairly well over the last ten years and she is one of the most incredible photography curators / scholars in the world today (and also a wonderful person). I know I have written about her before in this blog, but I need to say this again. She has an incredible talent to be able to communicate concepts or knowledge about the medium which everyone can understand. I don’t care if you have a casual interest in the medium or you hold a PhD in Photographic Studies if you listen to her talk about the medium, you will understand the topic and you will learn something. It is an amazing talent. Last fall Brent and Keller were able to arrange a time to fly down to Tucson to interview Becky. Brent and Keller released the podcast of Becky’s interview last week and I think it is outstanding. Yes, I admit that I am absolutely biased, but I encourage you to listen to the podcast and form your own opinion. I am confident you will take something away from the experience.

Brent, Keller, and Becky at the Center for Creative Photography

Additional Link:

During this podcast Becky spoke in depth about an Edward Weston portrait of his wife, Charis. I was pretty sure I remembered seeing the image, but I wanted to sure I was thinking of the right image. I found it on-line; and confirmed I was thinking of the correct image. I wanted to share the link here for everyone else. I agree with Becky, it is an Amazing Image!