Co-founders of Houston's FotoFest, Fred Baldwin and Wendy Watriss, have curated the best-ever show of photography from China.

When I returned home last month from reviewing portfolios at Houston's FotoFest, I was almost dizzy with delight. Not only did I meet a lot of very, very talented photographers, but I was stunned at the consistently super-high quality of the dozens and dozens of photo exhibitions that were organized throughout the city.

I returned with a lot of "discoveries" that I am eager to share with you over the next few weeks. And, just as important, I came away understanding how absolutely great a photo festival can be when the curators are brilliant, passionate, experienced and hard-working.

At the end of each day, everyone who had been participating in the intense and grueling review sessions, (imagine 14 interviews per day for four days straight), would climb onto a comfortable bus to be escorted through town to two or three massive exhibitions. It could have been exhausting, but it was completely energizing.

I was comparing notes with Chris Rauschenberg, who helps to run Blue Sky Gallery in Portland (among lots of other things he does), and he jotted off this report from his point of view. He nicely sums up how great the experience was. Here's what he had to say:

"One of the most amazing things about FotoFest is the fact that you always know that every year the Reviewers' Bus will take you to at least one exhibition by a photographer that you never heard of but who will turn out to be one of the greatest photographers in the world. You just take it for granted that it will happen every time - and it does. (Sometimes it can be awkward for the private party at the end of the Bus' itinerary, such as the year that the Bus brought us to the Pentti Sammallahti retrospective that was so magnificent that no one was willing to leave.) A mortal curator might hope to accomplish a feat like this once in their career, but Wendy Watriss and Fred Baldwin do it every time. (For comparison, imagine a baseball player who hits a grand slam home run every game he plays in.)

"This year the Bus took us to the unassumingly titled exhibition "Independent Documentary Photography 1985 - 2008" which featured the work of unknown photographers Lu Nan and Li Lang alongside Wu Jialin, who would have been unknown if Wendy and Fred hadn't already taken our breath away with a fabulous huge exhibition of his work at FotoFest 1996. Each of the three photographers in this show was represented by about 75 amazing images (three grand slams in one at bat? - my metaphor can't handle this level of curatorial greatness). We first entered the rooms of Wu Jialin's prints ("okay, I already knew this guy was incredible"), then moved on to Li Lang's work ("wait a minute - this guy is great too") and finally ended up in a state of absolute astonishment in Lu Nan's "The Forgotten People: the State of Chinese Psychiatric Wards." Chinese photographer Jimmy Chu (an indispensable part of this Chinese edition of FotoFest) translated Lu Nan's modest remarks and then passionately told us that he respected Lu Nan more highly than any other photographer and told us how Lu Nan spent 15 years as a fugitive on the run, making his pictures and smuggling them out of China under an assumed name while the government was hunting for him. To see a show this good is a once in a lifetime experience - but I know that Wendy and Fred will calmly step up to the plate and do it again two years from now."

Christopher Rauschenberg
Blue Sky Gallery

So, yes. Be sure to check back here at Lens Culture over the next few weeks as we dive deep into the discoveries from the portfolio reviews as well as the discoveries presented by FotoFest. And in the meantime, if you haven't checked it out already, take a look at this 60-image overview of Chinese Photography from 1934-2008.