FotoFest Biennial 2020 Ten by Ten: Forest

FotoFest’s International Meeting Place Portfolio Review, held in conjunction with their citywide Biennial, is the largest and longest-running event of its kind in the United States. Every two years, 150 curators, editors, and photography and fine art experts travel to Houston to review 450 photographic portfolios by emerging and established artists and photographers from around the globe. The Ten by Ten exhibition is a celebration of this important site of discourse and display, highlighting the works of 10 artists, nominated by 10 guest reviewers, whose works exemplify the broad range of contemporary photographic practice. Each of the artists in the exhibition is represented by the presentation of a single photographic series from their oeuvre. Diverse topics ranging from queer rights and Indigenous representation in media to unregulated commercial development and the erasure of complex histories are examined by the artists and further contextualized by a series of texts penned by the guest reviewers who selected them. The broad range of subjects featured in the exhibition reflects not only current attitudes in photographic praxis, but also those important issues and topics that appear in news headlines and frame the contemporary moment.