Photographers: Geoff Winningham

Geoff Winningham's professional career as a photographer, filmmaker, author and educator now spans more than 40 years. Winningham is a graduate of Rice University and obtained a Masters degree in photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago where he worked with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind among others. Winningham has been a member of the faculty in the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts at Rice University since 1969.

In the 1970's, Winningham, working with a 35 mm camera in black and white and printing his own images, chronicled unique aspects of life in Texas. Professional wrestling matches, rodeos, gun and stock shows, Friday night high school football, and rock and roll and country music concerts became some his favored venues. Collectively, these experiences led to Winningham's now well-known trilogy of publications including "Friday Night at the Coliseum," "Going Texan," and "Rites of Fall." Along the way, Winningham captured Texas courthouses on film as well.

In the 1980's, Winningham began photographing in color. An 11 year odyssey through Mexican fiestas and celebrations culminated with publication of "In the Eye of the Sun." Subsequently, Winningham embraced landscape photography and panoramic images and published "Along the Forgotten River." Perhaps Winningham's most notable landscape images are in his most recent book, "Traveling the Shore of the Spanish Sea."

Geoff Winningham has been a Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and has received five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Boston Museum of Fine Art. Adapting his techniques to best capture the subject matter of interest to him, Geoff Winningham has made impactful images in black and white and color, using 35 mm, format and now digital cameras. Winningham has accumulated a significant, four decade body of work, focused on Texas, Mexico and the Gulf Coast.

It has been more than 30 years since Geoff Winninham's images have been shown in New York City. Nine Geoff Winningham-printed silver gelatin images of Texas taken in the early 1970's and four of Winningham's color images from his Mexican Fiesta/celebration series are in this 2012 exhibition.