AUGUST 27, 2012 – JULY 7, 2013
LAS SOMBRAS | THE SHADOWS: Photograms

CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS: New Work

—by KATE BREAKEY

Las Sombras/The Shadows features work Australian native Kate Breakey created after moving to Arizona in 1999. Making pictures without a camera like William Henry Fox Talbot and Anna Atkins in the nineteenth century, Breakey also shares their affinity for recording the natural world in scientific detail as well as with artistic beauty. Her contact prints—known as photograms—have the sepia-toned look of Victorian images, yet their sensibility is distinctly modern. Luminous coyotes and whipsnakes, mice, rabbits, quail, cactus, moths and scorpions are imbued with her affection for the flora and fauna that inhabit the American Southwest, which is now her home. As she says, “The natural world is full of wondrous things to look at and to chronicle and catalogue. In my own way, I have devoted myself to that end.” Over 200 photograms, which Breakey donated to the Wittliff Collections and arranged salon style for the show, are on display, along with images from her newest series, Creatures of Light and Darkness, which are also on view through July 7.  Las Sombras/The Shadows celebrates the latest volume in the Wittliff’s Southwestern & Mexican Photography book series with the University of Texas Press.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO of the Las Sombras exhibition talk at the Wittliff on November 10, 2012.

^{[above] Bobcat (Felis rufus) by Kate Breakey, from Las Sombras / The Shadows}

Below: Kate Breakey talks about Creatures of Light and Darkness at the Temple of Music and Art in the city of Tucson, Arizona, where she lives. See many of these same images at Texas State's Wittliff Collections through July 7, 2013:

APRIL 19 – JULY 7, 2013
VAQUERO: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy

—photographs by BILL WITTLIFF

Our Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy exhibition returns in celebration of the new bronze Vaquero statue by Clete Shields, donated to Texas State by Bill and Sally Wittliff.

When Texas moved into the cattle business, its cowboy adopted many of the Mexican vaquero’s accoutrements and centuries-old methodologies of working herds in big country. In the early 1970s Bill Wittliff was invited to witness one of the last traditional roundups on the vast Rancho Tule in northern Mexico, and he fixed the vanishing vaquero tradition forever in nearly 5,000 photographs taken over a period of three years. Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is touring more than 60 of Bill Wittliff’s images that have been recreated as rich carbon-ink prints and arranged in sections accompanied by bilingual narrative texts. This exhibition is made possible in part by a “We The People” grant from the NEH.

^{[above] Refugio "Cuco" Salas, Remudero,by Bill Wittliff, © 1971}
 

ON PERMANENT DISPLAY
THE LONESOME DOVE COLLECTION

From hats to gun belts to boots, the complete outfits of Augustus “Gus” McCrae, Jake Spoon, and Woodrow F. Call (played by Robert Duvall, Robert Urich, and Tommy Lee Jones) are just a few of the many “making of” materials on permanent display from the beloved miniseries based on Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. This exhibition from the Wittliff’s major Lonesome Dove production archive takes visitors behind the scenes of the Emmy-winning show, with a look at props and principal costumes, set designs, costume sketches and production notes, Bill Wittliff's screenplay drafts, script pages, and photographs, plus much, much more.

NOW ON SALE! 
Purchase A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove signed by screenwriter and co-executive producer Bill Wittliff, author John Spong, and archives photographer Jeff Wilson.

Tour the Lonesome Dove Collection online.

Purchase A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove by Bill Wittliff.

^{[above] The Hat Creek Outfit, by Bill Wittliff, © 1988}

Upcoming Exhibitions

JUNE 3, 2013 – FEBRUARY 14, 2014
THE WRITER'S ROAD: Selections from the SAM SHEPARD Papers

The Wittliff Collections are home to the major archive of Sam Shepard, one of the world’s most widely produced—and considered one of the greatest living—American playwrights. The Writer’s Road is the first-ever comprehensive exhibition from this extensive and illuminating archive, and it celebrates the forthcoming book in the Wittliff’s Southwestern Writers Collection Series: Two Prospectors: The Letters of Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark. Edited by Texas State faculty member Chad Hammett, Two Prospectors presents selected correspondence and photographs from Shepard’s archive, chronicling the decades-long friendship between Shepard and Dark, who is Shepard’s former father-in-law from his marriage to actress O-Lan Jones. The Writer's Road exhibition includes Wittliff materials used by filmmaker Treva Wurmfeld to make the documentary, Shepard & Dark, which won the prize for Best Documentary Feature at the 2012 Woodstock Film Festival, among other awards.

Together, the exhibition and new book offer fascinating revelations and insights into the private life, working methods, and creative career of this Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, short-story writer, screenwriter, director, musician, and Academy Award-nominated actor. Watch the Wittliff's EVENTS page for details about a special Shepard event to be held this fall.

^{[above] Johnny Dark (left) and Sam Shepard, Mill Valley, CA, 1982}
 

AUGUST 1 – DECEMBER 1, 2013
MANUEL ÁLVAREZ BRAVO

One of the founders of modern photography, Manuel Álvarez Bravo (1902–2002) is considered Mexico’s first artistic photographer and perhaps the most important and influential figure in 20th-century Latin American photography. Now, after 20 years of collecting, the Wittliff presents the its first-ever solo exhibition of works by Mexico's don of photography. More than 50 signed vintage and modern prints taken between 1924 and 1995, predominantly in the 1930s, are on view. Included among the many famous images are: Bicicletas en domingo / Bicycles on Sunday; Caja de visiones / Box of Visions; El ensueño / The Day Dream; Obrero en huelga; asesinado / Striking Worker Murdered; Parábola óptica / Optical Parable; and Retrato de lo eterno / Portrait of the Eternal.

^{[above] Caja de visiones / Box of Visions by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, © 1939}
 

AUGUST 1 – DECEMBER 13, 2013
MÉXICO LINDO

The beauty of Mexico’s landscape and her people as seen through both foreign and native eyes, in photographs from the permanent collection.

^{[above] The Caress, by Mariana Yampolsky, © 1989}