NATIONAL STUDENT PHOTOGRPAHY EXHIBITION
High school and college student photographers were invited to submit slides of their photographs to the Texas Photographic Society (TPS), for the group’s first National Student Photography Competition. The Exhibition will travel throughout Texas for 2 years and be available for national exhibition sites.

Keith Carter juried the competition. Mr. Carter selected 60 images form 60 artists from the 194 artists submitting over 700 images. An exhibit catalogue was published with exhibiting photographers receiving three copies and entrants receiving one. The catalogue was sent to photography magazines, curators, museums and photography collector's.

JUROR'S STATEMENT
I always liked what the writer Henry James said when confronted with unfamiliar work. He asked himself what is the artist trying to tell me? Was he or she successful? And here’s the zinger? Was it worth doing in the first place? Sometimes, that last part kills a lot of my professional colleagues and myself pretty quickly.

With respect to students and to art making, I think it’s ALWAYS worth doing. I love student work. I tell myself I’m looking at the future. In my book, photographs with spontaneity, irreverence, and humor have equal standing with theoretical or conceptual concerns. Crank out some alternative processes or fly digital. Just show me excellence. I love it all when it’s done well.

For me, the full weight and mystery of your art rest in the relationship between you and your subject matter. So show me what you find interesting in the world. That is the best thing I can tell you because this exhibition should be about you, not the juror.

Keith Carter
Beaumont, Texas
March 2004

BIOGRAPHY
Keith Carter, Texas foremost contemporary photographer and an internationally recognized photographer and educator will jury the show. Mr. Carter holds the endowed Walles Chair of Art at Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas. He is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Regional Survey Grants and the Lange-Taylor Prize from The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. In 1997, Mr. Carter was the subject of an arts profile on the national network television show, CBS Sunday Morning. In 1998, he received Lamar University’s highest teaching honor, the University Professor Award, and he was named the Lamar University Distinguished Lecturer. Eight monographs of his black and white photographs have been published. Called “a poet of the ordinary” by the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Carter’s haunting, enigmatic photographs have been widely exhibited in Europe, The U.S., and Latin America.

TO VIEW IMAGES FROM THE STUDENT EXHIBIT

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