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One of the benefits of membership in the Texas Photographic Society is your eligibility to participate in the TPS Collectors' Print Program.
Members joining at the Friend, Patron and Benefactor levels may choose from an exclusive selection of fine prints by prominent, contemporary photographers. Join TPS, or renew your membership, and select one or more prints from 5 artists for a mere $225 each. In addition, TPS has initiated a Featured Artist Print Selection for internationally recognized artists at a special price. Tom Baril is this year’s Featured Artists. His image will sell for $1,000. You may receive all 6 prints for $2,000. Prices include shipping and handling. Remember, most print program artists work starts at $600 or more. This is a fine way to enhance your collection and to contribute to TPS programming.
Since the program’s inception in 1994, over 1,000 images have been purchased, raising over $170,000 for TPS. Proceeds from the print program are used to enhance and support TPS programs, most notably funding of TPS exhibition catalogues and numerous exhibits that TPS sponsors. Note, some of the prints are limited edition, you may want to renew or join before the edition is sold out.
We are proud to offer the following photographs this year from this select group of photographers.
Tom Baril
Roses in Vase
20”x16”
Toned silver gelatin print.
Edition of 35.
After graduating from New York's School of Visual Arts in 1980 with a BFA in photography, Tom Baril served as Robert Mapplethorpe's exclusive print maker. Since then he has distanced himself from the Mapplethorpe work and has enjoyed a solo career by creating something uniquely his own- stunning imagery from both behind the camera and out of the darkroom.
Baril’s work has been the subject of two stunning monographs, the highly acclaimed sold out self-titled book published by 4AD in 1997, and Botanica published by Arena Editions in 1999. His work has been featured in numerous publications and is among prestigious collections both public and private: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Center for Creative Photography, the George Eastman House, Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum, The Fogg Museum at Harvard University, the Polaroid Collection, and
the Elton John Collection.
He embraces every nuance of his medium. Whether it is 4x5 Polaroid pinhole or 8 x 10 collodion wet-plate, Baril creates images that are astonishingly perfect and exquisitely pure. His studies include urban architecture, minimalist seascapes and meticulously detailed botanicals and still lifes.
Few photographers are capable of bringing their viewers to look on something as familiar as a flower with such a new and fresh perspective. “If I am successful, the photograph reveals the underbelly, the overlooked and the under appreciated.”
In the words of one commentator, Baril's "exquisitely imagined and powerfully rendered" images are "...clearly founded upon the photographic masters of the past. But his tones and techniques demonstrate a contemporary vision, offering an elegant synthesis of artistic tradition and current aesthetics." In other words, the effect achieved in Baril's work is "both classic and
contemporary."
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Aline Smithson – Los Angeles, California
Venice
10”x10”
Silver gelatin print with sepia wash.
I Aline Smithson shot this image of Venice on a family vacation. Her husband and weary children retired to the hotel, but she was compelled to drink in the city with her cameras. As the sun was setting, she stood on a bridge with a Diana pinhole camera. The sight had an ageless quality, and she wanted to enhance that feel with a sepia oil wash.
After graduating from college, Aline moved to New York City to make a living as a painter. Although she continued to paint, she worked for many years as the Fashion Editor for Vogue Patterns Magazine. In that position, she had the privilege of working with, learning from and being inspired by many exceptional fashion photographers, including Horst, Mario Testino, Patrick Demarchelier, Arthur Elgort, and Bert Stern.
As a photographer, she looks for simplicity in the complex, telling a story but not giving away the ending, creating a memory of something that never happened—it’s a little bit of magic combined with tenderness. It's giving something dignity or a second glance. Making the mundane mysterious. It's celebrating life in a split second.
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Tom Chambers – Richmond, Virginia
Prom Gown #3
Archival Pigment Print, 10”x10”
Photomontage, Special TPS Edition of 25.
Prom Gown #3 was photographed with a medium format film camera in Yellowstone Park and Richmond, Virginia. The film was scanned and the separate images combined using Photoshop.
Tom Chambers was born on a farm in the religiously conservative area of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After high school he joined the Navy and spent a year on a patrol boat base in Vietnam which profoundly affected his outlook on life. Chambers earned a BFA from the Ringling School of Art and Design. His work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States. He has received numerous awards and honors for his work including a 2000-2001 Fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and a 2005-2006 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts fellowship.
For the past ten years he has been making photomontages, using photos from travels in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. His work is heavily influenced by Mexican Indian religious art, which conveys a sense of mystery and spirituality.
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Meg Birnbaum – Somerville, Massachusetts
Sheep in Hoods
9”x9”
Sepia toned silver gelatin prints.
These sheep were waiting to be brought into the judging tent at a state fair in Burlington, Vermont. The hoods are used to keep them clean for the contest. The air was thick with the aroma of cotton candy and fried dough liberally accented with the pungent essence of livestock.
Birnbaum graduated from Montserrat College of Art where she studied photography, illustration and graphic design and in the late 1980s returned to chair the Illustration Department for one year. She has worked extensively as a graphic designer specializing in magazines—including stints as founding art director of Cook’s Illustrated and as art director during the redesign of The American Prospect.
Her award-winning work has been featured in Camera Arts and The Harvard Review and exhibited extensively in galleries and museum in the US.
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Amy Holmes George – Nacogdoches, Texas
Her Magnolia
Toned silver gelatin print
6”x6”
Special edition of 25 for TPS.
Signature stamped and signed.
For as long as she can remember, Amy Holmes George has been a collector of objects that ultimately find their way into her work. She enjoys juxtaposing seemingly ordinary things with the figure fragmented thus expressing the fragility of life and the body. By constructing these still lifes, she invests meaning into simple object forms, using the body as a vehicle for expressing human emotion and reinforcing the figure’s presence.
Her Magnolia is part of a series, Dream Memory, that explores visions related to dream encounters. This image was inspired by a maternal relationship and is not intended to illustrate a specific dream story as much as render the idea of something fleeting more real, more tactile . . . like the memory of a dream.
As a photographer and educator, Amy's interests include traditional darkroom techniques, alternative photographic processes, digital imaging and book making. Her work is exhibited widely and has been featured recently at the PingYao Annual International Photography Festival in China, the Soho Photo Gallery in New York City and the Houston Center for Photography.
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Luther Smith – Fort Worth, Texas
Sumac Rt 11 South Carolina
16”x5.2” Ultra Chrome Inkjet
Printed on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308
Sumac Rt 11 South Carolina is a photograph from the series, American South by Luther Smith. It was made on the Rt 11, Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway. A child of the south, he finds beauty in simple subjects.
This photograph was made with a two and a quarter by seven-inch camera. Smith likes photographing the landscape with large format cameras. They allow him to create the subtle and complex beauty of out rural and urban environments. He is interested in both natural beauty and the seemingly chance relationships between plants, rocks, water, sky and man-made or altered structures.
Luther Smith's photographs have been exhibited extensively. His work is collected in many public collections including: the Library of Congress, the Amon Carter Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Dallas Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago..
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ABOUT THE TPS PRINT PROGRAM
Every year an assortment of prints by nationally recognized artists are made available to members who join at the Friend, Patron or Benefactor levels. In previous years members have been able to choose from diverse offerings from Chip Hooper, Robert Langham III, Jack Spencer, Maggie Taylor and David Gibson.
Members joining at the Friend level can select any one print, while Patron level members can choose 3 prints, and all 5 prints will be provided to members joining at the Benefactor level.
We hope you will consider joining or renewing at one of our Collector membership levels. Your moderate investment will provide you with prints you will be proud to display and will continue to fund the high quality level of programs you expect from the Texas Photographic Society.
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