“Those Damn Stairs,” by Fred Baldwin, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board, FotoFest International, March 2014
Have you ever walked up the stairs in an old apartment building in Paris? There’s a button on each landing that gives you the option of turning on the lights to the next floor. If you time it right you get to climb up with sufficient illumination to make it safely to where you are going. But – if you are old, creaky and slow – you might find yourself in the dark. This is a metaphor for getting the job done – and also hopefully reaching the next level. That’s what FotoFest is all about, the brainstorm that Wendy and I borrowed from the French.
For thirty years we have encouraged all the museums, galleries and arts spaces in Houston and surrounding counties to show photography for a month every two years. In 2014 this turns out to be 129 exhibitions under the umbrella of FotoFest. FotoFest curated exhibitions are largely devoted to forty-nine Arab photographers in four separate gallery locations. Our artists’ portfolio reviews – the Meeting Place – is a sixteen-day-affair that we believe has launched thousands of artists since the first one in 1986. But like my assent of the staircase in Paris, I have to admit, that the lights go out more times than I would like and I can’t help but think maybe things need to change.
Maybe I need to take the elevator. Nothing is quite as it used to be. I have been telling myself the same story for so long that I don’t know how to believe anything else. What’s reality? Are there too many portfolio reviews, an over load of festivals around the world, too many steps to take?
Then the lights went on. I got rewired.
I read a couple of pieces in the New York Times here and here and that is what I urge you to do.
How lucky Wendy and I are. We have a wonderful staff and have built an organization that might be able to help a man who used to be a photographer in Cuba before he was arrested, sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison, put in solitary confinement for eight months for taking photographs that the Cuban Government didn’t like.
Omar Rodriguez Saludes was miraculously released after seven years and exiled to Spain with his wife and has been living in Houston for the last year working construction. I interviewed him for two hours yesterday and we are going to do everything possible to fit him into the Meeting Place (it’s full) introduce him to all our important friends in photography and by doing our thing – putting talent in connection with opportunity. We will see what happens.
You can’t imagine what a favor Omar is doing me by allowing us to see if FotoFest still can do its magic after all these years. I am racing up those stairs and the lights are blazing. See you on the top floor.
Fred Baldwin
Meeting Place Portfolio Review for Artists is the largest and most international event of its kind. Pioneered by FotoFest, the event brings together 500 international artists and over 200 leading curators, gallery directors, publishers, and collectors for three weeks of one-on-one meetings. The Meeting Place takes place March 15-April 2, 2014. Information is available at : www.fotofest.org .
