Misty Keasler
Photographer Misty Keasler, whom we sent to Galveston in the wake of Hurricane Ike (“My Frail Island”), is no stranger to disaster areas. She was in New Orleans after Katrina for Newsweek and the New York Times. “People were so devastated that there was no hope,” she recalls. “In Galveston there was a feeling of ‘We’re going to get through this.’ ” Still, the Houston native saw a world turned upside down. “On one part of the Island scavengers were walking up and down the beach, carrying crowbars to open the boxes that had washed up onshore.”
Van Ditthavong
Shooting the UT-Arkansas game in September was an eye-opening experience for Van Ditthavong (“Come Early. Be Loud. Cash In”). “Having not grown up in Texas, I was agnostic about Longhorn football,” says the Dallas-based photographer, who was born in Laos and raised in northern Virginia. But his experience in front of 94,000 screaming fans changed that. “With the Longhorns scoring so much, it gave me plenty of chances to snap away and see the crowd go nuts,” he says. His one regret? “I feel bad that I have only one burnt-orange shirt.”
Lou Brooks
You’re more than likely to be familiar with Lou Brooks’s work: The California-based artist redesigned Monopoly’s famous “rich uncle” logo, and his art has been on the covers of Time and Newsweek. Of course, you also see it regularly in texas monthly, from features (“Shore ’Nuff,” June 2007) to pages like Hollywood, TX (February 2008). Brooks applies his Pop Art style to the Alamo this month for “You Aren’t Here”. “When I was ten, I’d cancel any other pleasure to watch Fess Parker’s Davy Crockett,” he says. “And I remember that last call at the Alamo: ‘Give ’em what fer, Davy.’ It took me a long time to figure out it wasn’t ‘Give ’em wet fur.’ ”
