Atlanta Photography Group - 2022 Street Photography Exhibition Announcement

Selected image: Los Angeles, California 06-17-2018 (CA DSC 5594)

I am very honored to have had one of my photographs chosen by renowned photographer Henry Horenstein to be in the Tell Me A Story: Documentary and Street Photography 2022 exhibition at the Atlanta Photography Group’s Gallery opening later this month.

This 2018 image is from the intersection of Maple and Olympic in Los Angeles and is titled “Los Angeles Olympian”. The image is part of my Los Angeles and general Street Photography portfolios. This is the first exhibition for this photograph.

The Atlanta Photography Group formed in 1987 and moved into its current space at Tula Art Center in 2002. The staff, especially Director & Curator Donna Garcia, at APG are so professional and the list of jurors they have been bringing in for their exhibition calls the last couple years is the best in the country. Donna is also an accomplished photographer in her own right, and I encourage you to follow the link to her work, it’s worth seeing. This is the first showing of my work in their gallery space.

As I stated to start off this post, it truly is an honor to have a photograph chosen by Henry Horenstein for this exhibition. Knowing his work, and the fact we have photographed similar topics, the selection means a lot to me. We have never met but I know we have photographed in the same places around the same time. Henry photographed at the Santa Anita Racetrack just before I started work on my Santa Anita portfolio and I think we may have crossed paths on the streets of Boston a couple years ago.

If you are in the Atlanta area during this exhibition time, I encourage you to stop by and see it. I will update this post later with installation views and other links as they become available.

Atlanta Airport Exhibition 2021

I am proud to announce that I have two photographs in the Atlanta Photography Group’s annual Airport Show which opens this Thursday at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Juror Amy Miller selected 30 photographs to exhibit in the central atrium of the airport.  Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the world’s busiest airport with an average of 260,000 visitors a day.  In 2019 Atlanta had 53.485,000 total visitors, the next closest airport was LAX at 42,880,000.  The exhibition will also be featured in the Atlanta Celebrates Photography Festival Guide because the festival will be occurring during the same time. The 2021 Airport Show is scheduled to be up September 30th to January 19th 2022.

My two included photographs are from different series.  One image is one of my all-time favorites and a prominent photograph from my Santa Anita book.  The photograph documents a fixated crowd watching a simulcast race, from another racetrack, on a large television monitor. 

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Simulcast Race - Santa Anita Racetrack - Arcadia California - October 14th 1990 SA-137 #08

The second photograph is from last year and part of my new portfolio documenting the experience of the pandemic and all that has happened since it began.  I love the irony of this image, and as soon as I saw the rainbow that day, I knew the most logical way to frame it for the times would be having the rainbow end in a trash can.

The Reality of 2020 -Newport Beach - California - April 10th 2020 NB DSC_9483

I think both images will work well in this space and unthemed exhibition.  These photographs can be experienced while walking past them and each image can provide a deeper experience for those who have a moment to stop and spend time viewing it.

Old Reviews of my Santa Anita book ....

In 1991 I published my first book, Santa Anita. I stumbled on to photographing at the racetrack while searching for a place to photograph here in California with images like I found on the streets of New York and Chicago. You can find Street Photography in California, even Los Angeles now, but it is different because California is so spread out and everyone drives everywhere. The track has it all, people from all walks of life, right there in one place, and easy to move about them photographing, just like being in New York. I continue to photograph at Santa Anita, probably more as a personal retreat than actually working on a new project but that is fine, the process is what matters when photographing. Plus I have been able to photograph two Triple Crown winning horses the last few years by continuing to go out. Anyways in case you are wondering why I am writing a post about a project from 27 years ago today, its because I just was doing a Google Search on myself and came across a couple old reviews of the book which I don’t think I have shared before. Pretty accurate in my mind so I wanted to put do a post on them and thought it best to provide an introduction why I was.

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The Reviews

Laura Rose of Equine Images Magazine wrote: "In his book Santa Anita, photographer William Karl Valentine captures the pulse of this California racetrack with his camera, The images, chosen from four years' worth of photographs, include everything your eye may pick up during a day at the track - from a classic stretch drive to a refreshing horse bath, from a grandstand littered with people and paper to a lost child in the safe grip of a track security officer." "But the photographs of the people of the track tell just as much of the story, and Valentine has captured them not as snapshot figures, but as friends...it's evident that not only does Valentine know the track, it knows him."

Mark Ratzky of the Daily Racing Form wrote: ""Santa Anita" is a must-see for any fan of this racetrack. The book contains 80 black and white pictures of just about every aspect of an afternoon at the foot of the beautiful San Gabriels, and really manages to capture a day at the races."