JOHN DYER

VALOR & SWAGGER

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM TEXAS AND THEN SOME

HEIDI VAUGHAN FINE ART is very proud to present, Valor & Swagger, Photographs from Texas and Then Some, a photographic retrospective of the work of John Dyer. The exhibition opens Saturday, February 24, 2024, at the gallery, located at 3510 Lake Street at Colquitt in Houston's oldest Gallery Row. It runs through March 30, 2024. An artist talk will take place on the closing day at 1 pm. All gallery events are always open to the public and offered free of charge. Valor & Swagger is presented as part of Critical Geography for FotoFest 2024.

John Dyer is a Texas photographer. For 50 years he has explored what makes Texas the mythical, iconic state of mind that intrigues people worldwide. His subjects include Conjunto musicians, Vaqueros, rodeo cowboys, the bullfight, boxers, Indians, and more. He tries to be as honest as possible while observing and photographing his subjects.

One of John Dyer's photographs of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was included in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Icons of Style exhibition in 2019. Selena, the beloved superstar known as the Queen of Tejano Music, was born in Lake Jackson, Texas, and resided in Corpus Christi, Texas. Dyer was asked by Mas Magazine to photograph Selena in 1992. It was the first of two photo shoots he had with the singer. In this first instance, he took her portrait in his San Antonio studio posed with three different backdrops. The images with the signer in front of red drapes and a black and white checkerboard floor became the photographs most associated with Selena. At the MFAH's Icons of Style, Dyer's Selena was placed between Run DMC and David Bowie. Following that exhibition, the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio transformed its Rotunda with a major exhibition, Selena Forever/Siempre Selena, which was a tribute honoring the 25th anniversary of the singer's untimely passing. That show ran for a year and a half, from January 15, 2020, through August 1, 2021. The exhibition was then expanded and traveled to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and ran from September 4, 2021, through January 10, 2022. Most recently, Dyer's Selena Forever/Siempre Selena opened on February 15, 2023, at the El Paso Museum of Art. Images from the limited edition series are in numerous important collections, including the National Portrait Gallery.

FotoFest's Critical Geography reexamines traditional Western and historical understandings of geography while expanding these investigations to new realms. Borrowing its name from the subdiscipline of geography that questions and challenges power structures, inequality, and the dominant ideologies shaping physical space, Critical Geography explores how space, place, and communities are influenced by social, economic, ecological, and political forces. By critically analyzing these dynamics, the works in the exhibition provoke conversations around social justice, environmental sustainability, and transformative change.

John Dyer was influenced early in his career by the work of Russell Lee and Garry Winograd. He has spent his career documenting the people and culture of South Texas and his native Montana. He is the author of six books, has written several screenplays, and directed two short films. He lives with his wife, Diane Mazur, a well-known abstract painter, in San Antonio, Texas.