Francesco Nonino is an Italian photographer who lives and works in Bologna. His work is exhibited in the Never Been to Houston show, and he answered a few questions for us about Houston and the exhibit.
What was your perception of Houston before you started this project?
A place somewhere far away, linked to my childhood memories on space missions
What did you do before to start this project? Did you research Houston or just jump right in?
The curators' suggestions of using second hand clues as firsthand research material, and to focus on new information technologies were very stimulating for me. So I researched the Internet extensively before starting shooting.
How difficult was it to find images that represent a city you've never been to?
It was relatively easy: I immediately got caught by webcams. Webcams are information technology providing real time shots of ordinary places which I think are the real portrait of a place. I like to think that a banal webcam image is extremely familiar to Houston commuters driving past that place every day. I think that the image of home that everyone of us carries inside is of an ordinary place, not of a monument, or of a famous location. It's your street, the store where you go everyday, that damn railroad crossing always closed when you come back from work....
Did your perception of Houston change while you were working on the Never Been to Houston show?
It surely did. Now I feel Houston as a place where I have been, at least with my spirit. This feeling inspired me to combine Houston's real time images with pictures I took during my everyday life.
Do you have plans to visit the city anytime soon?
Sooner or later I'd love to.
Is there anything else you'd like to say about Houston or the show?
Jon Rubin and the Aurora Picture Show people had a great idea. "Never been to..." could be a framework transferable to other places for other similar projects that will never be boring or repetitive.
Jon Rubin is an assistant professor at Carnegie-Mellon, a multi-disciplinary artist, and the brains behind Never Been to Houston. He is co-curator of the exhibit and will be in Houston (for the first time) on April 11 to speak at Lawndale Art Center. He also spoke to us about this project:
What was your perception of Houston before you started this project?
I used to follow the Rockets when Clyde Drexler was there and also when he played college ball at University of Houston (Phi Slama Jama) with Akeem Olajuwon. Those two seemed like the classiest guys in the world to me at the time. I think the TV show Dallas was really big when those guys were playing and being from Philly and never traveling much I just conflated the whole upper-crust Ewing Family with the ecstatic slam-dunking glorification that was coming from Phi Slama Jama. It made Houston seem like the land of excess and good times to me. Now the pro team has Yao Ming and I don't know what to think. Maybe it's the everything is big in Texas phenomena. I wonder what the Chinese community is like in Houston?
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit