Photographer

A Texas Photojournalist Is Honored for His Heart-wrenching Portraits of Grief

Tamir Kalifa has received the 2024 American Mosaic Journalism Prize for his work documenting the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting.

You’ve Never Seen the Big Thicket Like This

Photographer Keith Carter explores the otherworldly wetlands of East Texas in a stunning new book.

A New Photo Exhibit Celebrates the “Cultura” of South Texas, From Sandra Cisneros to Selena

San Antonio photographer Al Rendón brings fifty years of rock and street photography to the Witte Museum.

How Gray Malin Built a Photography Empire on the Dream of a Basic Getaway

Malin’s ubiquitous aerial images of beaches, versions of which you can purchase on puzzles, rugs, towels, and more, are a hallmark of our era.

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Renowned Houston Photographer Earlie Hudnall Jr. Always Has His Camera In Hand

Famous for portraits of Houston’s Black community, Hudnall's work is recognized around the world while his subject matter remains distinctly local.

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A Fine-Art Photographer in Beaumont Focuses on the Beauty of Bugs

Lyne Raff gets up close and personal with moths, cicadas, and other intricate insects.

Our Favorite Photos of 2022

From emotion-filled portraits to sweeping landscapes, this year’s top shots required out-of-the-box concepts and a little quick thinking.

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The Story Behind a 70-Foot Concrete Arrow Near Odessa

A hundred years ago, U.S. airmail pilots depended on a coast-to-coast bread-crumb trail of arrows—though most have been destroyed, buried, lost, or forgotten.

San Antonio Is All of a Sudden a Great Public Art Destination

A vibrant new book by photographer Frederick R. Preston and former Texas poet laureate Carmen Tafolla captures San Antonio’s wealth of public murals, mosaics, and sculptures. 

How Photographer Keith Carter Captured the Rough-hewn Pride of 1980s East Texas

The Beaumont photographer zeroed in on the dignity of East Texas residents in his 1989 Texas Monthly photo essay.

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The Man Known as the “Big Bend Photographer” Reflects on His Life’s Work

Texas Country Reporter revisits James H. Evans after thirty years. His long career has taken different turns, but his unwavering commitment to the people and places of West Texas defines his legacy.

A New Documentary Captures Longtime Houston Photographer Ben DeSoto’s Storied Life

‘For Art’s Sake’ delves into the photojournalist’s work documenting local music scenes, poverty, public policy.

Smile and Say, “Bush!”

Photographer David Valdez is back on familiar turf: on the campaign trail, documenting the public and private moments of a candidate with the surname Bush.

Paw Prints

Photographer Keith Carter’s latest pet project reminds me of big Texas dogs I’ve owned—some clownish, some serious, but every one of them great.

Wyatt’s World

Thirty years after he took his first photograph for us—of charming kook Stanley Marsh 3—contributing photographer Wyatt McSpadden looks back on his extraordinary career and tells the stories behind some of our favorite images.

Field Work

Andrew Lichtenstein spent six years taking pictures inside Texas’ vast prison system. The result is an anthropological study of a brutal culture.

The Searcher

Photographer Kurt Markus spent years tracking down modern working cowboys for his new book, ‘Cowpuncher.’ He corralled the genuine article at several Texas spreads.

A Wild Life

A terrific and prolific photographer remembered.

War Games

In the suddenly trendy world of World War II wannabes, these Texans are big guns.

The Photographers

Lights! Camera! Acknowledgments! Presenting the lensmen and lenswomen who made this issue possible.

It Ain’t Over Till It’s Overbeek

FOR WILL VAN OVERBEEK, traveling from his home in Austin to Harlingen to shoot the Marine Military Academy (see “A Few Bad Boys,”) wasn’t anything new: Ten years ago he did the same thing (for a proposed photo essay that never got published). In fact, photographing cadets has been

Searching for Santa

This time of year, Yule find him hanging around East Texas: On lawns and roofs, he’s a Claus célèbre.

El Circo

As in Hanoi and Moscow, the circus in Mexico is no three-ring extravaganza. It’s one of the grittiest shows on earth.

Mary, Queen of Plots

For fans of Mary Willis Walker, May will be the merriest of months, for that’s when the Austinite’s fourth novel will hit stores. In All the Dead Lie Down (Doubleday, $22.95), her plucky protagonist, Lone Star Monthly reporter Molly Cates, springs into action to find her father’s killer and foil

The Lens Justifies the Means

If you measure a photographer by the stature of his subjects, then Timothy Greenfield-Sanders is very big indeed. After all, he’s shot such luminaries as Jimmy Carter, Vaclav Havel, Hillary Clinton, and for this month’s issue of Texas Monthly, George and Barbara Bush (see “The Revision Thing”). And if

What a Drag

Celebrity portraiture often requires that the subject be ready for anything. An imaginative photographer like Houston’s Pam Francis will conjure up unusual settings and costumes to best evoke her subject’s true nature, as when she lured oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt and his German shepherd to the roof of a building

Hail, Mary Ellen

For thirty years Mary Ellen Mark has made her name as a documentary photographer by not shying away from tough assignments, whether that means traveling for six months in India to shoot circus folk or infiltrating the world of runaway kids in Seattle. Chronicling life at Abilene’s House of Yahweh

Range Rover

After fifty years of traveling the Southwest, ranch photographer Frank Reeves left behind a vast body of work and unforgettable portraits of the cowboy’s way of life.

Marathon Man

In 1988, when James H. Evans was in his mid-thirties, he left behind a successful photography studio in Austin and moved to remote Marathon, where he took a job as a cook at the Gage Hotel and shot pictures on the side. “Everyone thought I was nuts,” he says. “I

Her Three Sons

For the Wilsons of Dallas, taking pictures was a family affair. Today the mother is a successful photographer and her boys are hot Hollywood commodities. Here’s a look at Laura Wilson’s personal album.

Good-bye to a Friend

He braved dangerous criminals, stalked wild wolves, waded into floodwaters, and chased a hurricane down the Texas coast into Mexico, but in a cruel turn of fate he was felled by a tiny insect. Photographer Doug Milner died November 13 after suffering an allergic reaction to a wasp sting at

Barton Springs Celebrants, Austin, 1990

Dead Again

Get your masks on; put on your dancing shoes. It’s time for Mexico’s Day of the Dead, one of the liveliest celebrations around.

Hot Shot

Haven’t heard of Geof Kern, Texas’ most famous photographer? You must live here.

Portraits in Power

Helmut Newton, world famous for his bizarre, sometimes shocking erotic photographs, turns his lens on another exotic subject—Texas tycoons.

Ambient Color

As these photographs show, in Mexico the strange is commonplace, and the commonplace, strange.

Shrimpers

Someone endured weeks of hard work, loneliness, and seasickness to land that lovely pink delicacy on your plate.

In the Still of the Night

A photographer finds mystery and magic.