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Just south of San Antonio’s Southtown, along South Flores Street near Lone Star Boulevard, is Dock Space Gallery. The gallery is part of the Lone Star Art District.
Dock Space owner and Artist Bill Fitzgibbons holds Second Saturday artwalk events every month, showing both new and established artists on his sprawling arts facility. During September, that event is known as "Fotoseptiembre" and is a group photography exhibition. Their work explores Mexican American life in San Antonio.
This month's presentation is called "Close to Home" and features the work of 15 artists. The exhibit is curated by Ricardo Romo.
Ricardo Romo, who was president of UTSA from 1999 to 2017, has curated the exhibit.
His own work will also be exhibited in another gallery and includes photos he himself has taken for the last half-century.
“It's a retrospective show on my part in the 50 years of photography,” he said.
Romo has a documentarian focus on the pictures he takes.
“I'm a documentary photographer. I'm not a fine arts photographer. We got some fine arts photographers there,” Romo said. That ‘there’ is right next door and those 14 photographers’ works show a wide variety of styles and content.
Romo says the sum of the photographs in the two galleries illustrates that San Antonio has a deep well of photographic talent.
“I have 40 pieces in one big room, and then next door, there'll be equal amount, about 40-45 pieces,” Romo said. “I will say that there are three artists in the show who have been collected by the Smithsonian (Museum in Washington DC)
Romo said each of these photographers has an individual style, and each focuses on what interests them for their photography.
“Al Rendon has got some really great lowrider cars. He's been doing some stuff with lowriders recently. (He) had a big show in Odessa,” he said.
Romo wants San Antonio to become known far and wide as a city of art. He said encouraging young artists is one way to do that.
“There's some young photographers in the show that had not shown much. I wanted to encourage these young people in their 20s to also be part of it.”
You can see their works for free at the Dock Space Gallery this Saturday, September 12, from 4 -9 p.m.
