Making a Scene!: How Visionary Individuals Created an International Photography Scene in Houston, Texas

Making a Scene! is the story of how visionary individuals created an international art world around photography. A classic Texas tale of seemingly quixotic ideas, audacious goals, oil booms and busts, generous philanthropists, southern sensibilities, grandiosity, and resolve, this book documents the social history of ‘who did what and when’ to create an international photography scene in such an unlikely place as Houston.

Beginning with MFAH Director Bill Agee’s early dream of a photography department, a vibrant and engaged photography scene grew. What was once unimaginable became imaginable and then continued to grow and flourish through the work of Anne Tucker at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, local photographers who created Houston Center for Photography, and Wendy Watriss and Fred Baldwin, with Petra Benteler, who started the first international photography festival in the U.S., FotoFest. The scene that Anne, Fred, Wendy, and others fostered in Houston is nothing short of remarkable.

This is the story of how Houston became the place to be for photography.

The Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography, Anne Wilkes Tucker, sat alone in her office surrounded by boxes waiting to be filled. How to sort a life into boxes? Could cardboard hold years of ideas, friendships, and memories? Somehow, she had to fit 39 years of her life into these containers. Some things would go to the museum archives, but much more would be leaving with her. Anne had spent more than half her life leading the Photography Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and though somewhat wistful, she decided now was the time to close that chapter in her life. She had actually been talking about retiring after completing her acclaimed War/Photography exhibition, co-curated with Natalie Zelt and Will Michels, in 2012. Working on that project for over a decade, Anne had traveled the globe to war museums and military archives steeping herself in the visual documents of violence and brutality. War/Photography had been a tour de force, including photographs from more than 280 photographers, spanning six continents and over 165 years of conflicts, and was accompanied by a 600-page catalog.5 Anne had never done anything halfway, and this exhibition had been a culmination of her all-consuming passion for research and discovery. But now, she was ready to move on. Tonight, as she surveyed everything around her — the several shelves of her beige notebooks where she had carefully detailed years of photographs seen and photographers met, exhibition catalogs she had authored or contributed to, awards of various sizes and all the piles of files filled with research materials that covered every flat surface — the prospect of her retirement shifted from someday to now.

The clear June evening sky bestowed a golden hue to the trees outside Anne’s office window, and most everyone else had already gone home for the day. Anne loved being in the museum at night and taking advantage of her access, after all the visitors had gone, to go up to the third floor. To be alone in the John A. and Audrey Jones Beck Collection, Anne says, “was one of my favorite privileges of working at the museum.” In the gallery, Anne had a bounty of masterworks like Vincent van Gogh’s The Rocks or Claude Monet’s The Japanese Footbridge, Giverny or Kees van Dongen’s The Corn Poppy all to herself, but she always stood longest in front of the Derain. The Turning Road, L’Estaque, 1906, by André Derain captivated her since she first saw it. Considered a masterpiece of the avant-garde art movement of Fauvism, the painting is in the vibrant and intensely colorful style of the fauves. Trees of red, orange, and blue dot an idyllic landscape aglow with yellow sunlight. For Anne, it was Derain’s bravery and audaciousness that called to her — she admired the daring boldness of constructing a scene that is both realistic in terms of trees and people while simultaneously the brilliance of the colors create a fantastical place. After visiting the Derain for years, Anne knew every curve of every tree. She had traced the turn of the road around each bend and explored the vivid intensity of the cool blues adjacent to the flaming oranges. “My favorite painting,” Anne explains, “I had to visit it one more time to say goodbye — this would be my last time alone in the gallery at night.”