photo by Morgan Sasser
Two of my photographs taken in Lima, Peru (2002) and Baltimore, Maryland (2007) are on exhibit from Aug 6 - September 20, 2009 as part of the ‘Caliente/Hot’ exhibit at the New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery, 1111 Saint Mary Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
The juror, José Torres-Tama, esteemed visual/performance artist and writer, noted that the submissions organically fell in to three distinct categories of heat: Landscape, Bodies and Surreal.
Great photographers possess the uncanny ability to frame our reality with their keen eyes and capture the sublime characteristics of everyday life, or simply focus their lens on what many of us may neglect to observe. While some interpretations of the theme were more understated, most submissions for Caliente / Hot had plenty of calor (heat) and literal fire in them, and there were three distinct categories of images: landscapes, bodies, and the surreal.
From an abundance of strong entries, the photos selected for this exhibit raised my aesthetic temperature gauge the most, and my choices were initially based on a visceral reaction to each file I opened, as a curious curator in search of picante pictures. Once I narrowed my selections, I had to literally go through two additional editing sessions to arrive at this final collection of 33 photos. Some works inhabit a general spirit of mercury-rising levels with provocative and intense imagery while others communicate a cool fever and mysterious danger.
---José Torres-Tama
