By Mara Levy
The year 2006 marks the 10th anniversary of the Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern & Mexican Photography, at Texas State University-San Marcos. Located on the seventh floor of the Albert B. Alkek Library, this vast regional collection contains works from the 19th century to the present day, with an emphasis on contemporary imagery.

The Wittliff Gallery is a treasure trove for art lovers and collectors across the country. Yet the man behind the eponym, Bill Wittliff, co-founder along with his wife, Sally, is most often associated with a different title: A-List Screenwriter. (His film credits include The Black Stallion, Lonesome Dove, Legends of the Fall, and The Perfect Storm.) Wittliff is also an accomplished photographer, book publisher, and producer.

In the interest of full disclosure, I had the pleasure of working alongside Wittliff during the gallery’s auspicious beginnings, initially hired by the university to catalog the fast-growing collection and assist with the installation of the inaugural show. Two years later, I would go on to work as Wittliff’s research, darkroom, and personal assistant in his Austin office. It was a job that, at times, didn’t feel much like a job at all; rather an unorthodox form of home schooling, where I was encouraged to study art, photography, writing, and the strategies behind a mean game of Texas Hold’em. Truth be told, my poker studies with Bill were a flop. (I still owe him roughly 475 Cokes®.) Fortunately, he kept me around for the better part of six years, during which time I came to know him as a man who takes pleasure not in public recognition, but in unassumingly making the photography about which he’s passionate available to the public.

Wittliff’s love of the medium is apparent not only in the innumerable art books that line his shelves, and in the framed photographs that wallpaper his two-story historical home-turned-office, but also in the hundreds of miscellaneous camera parts that cover his desk and side tables. For Wittliff, contemporary photography is not synonymous with digital technology or the latest in single-lens-reflex cameras. He shot his most recent photographic series, La vida brinca [Life Jumps], using pinhole cameras he made by duct taping the backs of old Hassleblads to vintage shutters and cementing custom-built pinhole discs where the glass lenses used to be. Wittliff’s appreciation of the wide range of photographic styles and techniques is reflected in the gallery’s collection, which includes an array of work by acclaimed artists Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Annie Leibovitz, Richard Misrach, Joel-Peter Witkin, Kate Breakey, Jayne Hinds Bidaut, Rocky Schenck, Russell Lee, Mariana Yampolsky, Arthur Rothstein, Erwin Smith, Lee Friedlander, and Charles Lummis.
The idea for a gallery and photography collection “just kind of whiffed by,” explains Wittliff. “I envisioned a place of preservation and inspiration, where young photographers who have the itch, but not yet the courage, to create, can go and see the earliest works of established photographers and see what their work looked like before they found their eyes.”
Keith Carter is one of the many photographers whose work Wittliff hopes will serve as a creative impetus to young artists. “I can go to the photograph he took in Mexico, near Lake Patzcuaro in the 1970’s,” says Wittliff. “It’s a picture of ribbons in a tree left over from a celebration of some sort. In my opinion, that’s when Keith started seeing symbolically, not just the thing itself. It’s where he found the possibility of poetry in his own work.”
The Wittliff Gallery holds over 600 of Carter’s images, the largest of any institution, housing a cross section of photographs shot over the past 30 years. “I’m very proud to be part of the collection,” says Carter, over the phone, from his studio in Beaumont, Texas. “The collection provides emerging artists with support and inspiration. For young photographers to have that confirmation or credence, to have that encouragement to continue working and hone styles, it’s simply invaluable.”
One cannot fully appreciate the Wittliff Gallery without exploring its relationship to the Southwestern Writers Collection. Founded by the Wittliffs in 1986, ten years before the photography collection, it has become a distinguished and steadily growing archive, providing access to and preserving the papers and artifacts of principal Southwestern writers, filmmakers, and musicians. When asked why the two collections are housed alongside one another, Wittliff explains, “What joins the Writers Collection and the Photography Collection is that they both tell stories that can enlighten or exalt the human condition.”
Keith Carter couldn’t agree more. “I think writers and photographers go hand in hand,” he says. “They both listen to the voices in their head, and they’re both visual people. The only difference is that writers create image through narrative, whereas photographers imply narrative through imagery. In terms of my aesthetics, I’ve been equally influenced and elevated by what I’ve read as by what I’ve seen.”
Connie Todd, the curator of both archives, and her knowledgeable staff deserve an endless amount of credit for how far both collections have come in such a short span of time. Todd, a recovering Spanish Professor, has known Wittliff since 1982, when she went to work for him at Encino Press. Shortly after, Todd discovered Mariana Yampolsky’s work at Galleria Sin Fronteras in Austin, Texas. Todd’s interest in the work compelled her to track down the artist in Mexico City. Today the Wittliff Gallery not only holds 260 images by Yampolsky, but also features countless works by Mexican photographers, such as Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Lola Bravo, Graciela Iturbide, Marco Antonio Cruz, Antonio Turok, Hector Garcia, Flor Garduño, and Eniac Martínez Ulloa, with whom relationships were cultivated from that initial meeting with Yampolsky. When asked what she is most proud of during her tenure as curator, Todd doesn’t skip a beat: “Our contemporary Mexican photography collection. According to scholars more knowledgeable than I, it’s the best in the country.”
The accessibility of both collections is one of many features that define these archives and sets them apart from, and above, special collections in other universities. As Carter points out, “They simply don’t have the hands-off attitude some of the larger institutions cultivate.” Whether you’ve found a bench in one of the two Saltillo-tiled rooms that make up the gallery, or are examining Edward Curtis prints in the Writers Collection’s southwest-inspired reading room, you’re encouraged—by the thoughtfully designed space and the people who run it—to linger and explore. It is truly a magical arena in which to study the past and the present by way of the arts and letters that best define the region.
For more information on the Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern & Mexican Photography go to www.library.txstate.edu/swwc/wg/index.html. Stephen L. Clark Gallery, in Austin, represents the artists whose work is featured in this article.
Levy is a freelance writer, currently living in Los Angeles.
Photos courtesy of the Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern & Mexican Photography, Texas State University-San Marcos.