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San Antonio Museum Of Art

Having joined FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA in the last few years, the San Antonio Museum of Art has already established itself as a must-go, must-see destination for fans and enthusiasts of photography. More importantly, the quality and scholarly cred of the exhibits presented at SAMA in conjunction with FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA, have helped to enhance our community’s perception and understanding of the photographic arts.

Currently on display through February of 2010 is Culinary Delights: Photographs By David Halliday, an exhibit of images by New Orleans photographer David Halliday, curated by David Rubin, SAMA’s Brown Foundation Curator of Contemporary Art.

Corollary to the exhibit is A Conversation With David Halliday, a continuation of the highly informative series of interviews and lectures regularly conducted by David Rubin with guest artists.

David Halliday, featured artist, Culinary Delights: Photographs By David Halliday.
(Read the Interview with David Halliday by Elizabeth Pearson in Zester Daily, The Culture Of Food & Wine).

David Rubin, Brown Foundation Curator of Contemporary Art, San Antonio Museum of Art.

Always attuned to the zeitgeist. Always on the cusp of meaningful trends in contemporary art. Always engaged and energetic. Always involved with his community and involved with the artists in his community. A perennial optimist. Open-minded and inclusive. David Rubin is the SAMA contemporary art curator San Antonio San Antonio has needed for so long. Self-effacing almost to a fault, although his stream-of-consciousness monologues would make one believe otherwise, David has made his presence felt in San Antonio in ways many are still wont to appreciate. FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA is a fan of David Rubin.

Entrance to the Culinary Delights: Photographs By David Halliday exhibit.

In the early 1990s, David Halliday moved to New Orleans to take a job as a chef, but his keen eye for formal relationships steered him in a different direction. Since 1992, he has been exhibiting his photographs of people, places, and things.

Halliday’s early photographs are in a traditional format, mostly sepia-toned gelatin silver prints that are developed by the artist in his darkroom. More recently, he has been exploring color photography using digital technology to fine-tune each image. Although Halliday has produced many landscape and portrait photos, this exhibition focuses on his still life compositions using food, an appropriate subject for an artist who began his career as a chef.

Halliday’s photographs of food imagery reveal his penchant for exotic subjects and his fondness for staging a composition to resemble art historical prototypes. The artist’s Box Series, a project begun in 2000, reveals his approach to creating a body of work according to a systematic process. While spending his summer in Florence, Italy, Halliday came upon a cookie display case that had an interesting design, and he began using it as a prop for staging food compositions. The recent color photographs are also evocative in their art historical associations or metaphoric overtones. Compositions are still organized as the old masters might have painted them, with many of the objects taking on anthropomorphic qualities. In 2002, Halliday had a major retrospective of his work at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans. His photographs are included in the collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

Culinary Delights: Photographs by David Halliday is generously supported by the Marcia and Otto Koehler Foundation and the Helen and Everett Jones Exhibition Endowment.

Partial view of the Culinary Delights: Photographs By David Halliday exhibit.

Detail from the Culinary Delights: Photographs By David Halliday exhibit.

Arriving in grand style in Richard Arredondo’s classic black Caprice, with whitewall tires, David Rubin and David Halliday are greeted by Ann Kinser at SAMA.