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State Of The Art
Fotoseptiembre – A Little History
Michael Mehl

Fotoseptiembre has been a photographic arts platform for three decades. It’s been a long and daunting thirty years of producing a festival every September and maintaining an archive of a very broad range of photographic expressions; all while keeping Fotoseptiembre private, independent and sustainable by tending to our day jobs as self-employed creatives. 

Fotoseptiembre came to life in 1994, when Patricia Mendoza was named Director/Founder of the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City. Patricia and I had met around 1980, soon after she graduated from the Universidad Iberoamericana with a degree in Art History. At the time, I was living in Coyoacan, in Mexico City, where I had recently set up a studio/atelier –showing my work and that of other artists. I was one of the very few private art dealers in the city, and the only one who was a working artist. Patricia was the director of Los Talleres, a private cultural center owned by the dancer Isabel Beteta, which was located just a few blocks from my place. Patricia and I soon met and became fast friends and project partners. 

In the following years, Patricia and I frequently broached the possibilities of creating a photography festival that would embrace the openness and simplicty of a feria popular. Since the vast majority of cultural projects in Mexico are either initiatives by wealthy folks or the products of government dictates –all with the intent of gaining a luster of cosmopolitan sophistication– it was unlikely that such a simplistic notion would work. 

In that same period, I gained a close, eye-opening look at the inner workings of the state-sponsored cultural machinery in Mexico. This is when and where I developed a distaste for the institutional intersection of state and culture that dominates the art world to this day. 

Fast forward a decade and I was already living in San Antonio. In the Fall of 1994, Patricia called soon after becoming Director of Centro de la Imagen. She spoke of her plans for Fotoseptiembre and how it had been modeled on our conversations from a decade earlier. She asked if I would be willing to start the international component of the festival, and knowing well my views on cultural institutions she promised I would have the liberty to implement my own formats and guidelines. 

It was a place and time where this kind of initiative could actually work. Back then there were maybe half a dozen large photography festivals worldwide, and only one in the United States, Fotofest in Houston. The internet was just a baby, there were no social media interlopers, and travel was infrequent and expensive for most people. But more important, there was no such thing as an eclectic, inclusive photography festival that allowed the opportunity for anyone to participate without having to go through a gatekeeper vetting process.

I liked the idea of a worldwide feria popular and told Patricia I would do it as long as I could organize and manage it accordingly. Early in 1995 I joined the board of the Texas Photographic Society (TPS), and proposed organizing an international conference and exhibitions event in San Antonio that would feature Patricia Mendoza and Centro de la Imagen as honored guests. My wife Ann Kinser and I quickly honed our rustic international organizational chops, and together with D. Clarke Evans (President of TPS at the time), we crafted a very succesful event in the Fall of 1995, PhotoSintesis, which was the immediate precursor to Fotoseptiembre-Safoto. I left the TPS board soon after, and Ann and I began our Fotoseptiembre journey. 

Patricia Mendoza was a magician. She could make things happen that others could only dream of. There was never a personal or pecuniary agenda, it was always about the challenge of completing projects against all odds –made possible thanks to her tireless, infectious enthusiasm and the tight ship run by her personal assistant, Josefina Montero. Patricia quickly acquired international recognition and was sought out by organizations and governments all over the world. Then, as these things go, in 2000 there was the usual transition in Mexico’s political administration, and Patricia had to leave her post. 

By then, Fotoseptiembre already had a life of its own and we found it best to discontinue the arrangement with Centro de la Imagen, especially since Patricia and her magic were no longer there. 

In 2002 our first website went online, and with Paul Vaughn on board we were well on our own merry way. Soon, Patricia Mendoza was on our masthead as an international advisor, presenter and curator (Patricia passed in 2020). The rest of our story is amply documented on our website.

So here we are, thirty years later, still moving along, still paying our own way as we go, Ann, myself and Paul.

I recently read an interesting narrative about the peyoteros of South Texas written by a non-tribal outsider experiencing his own journey. The bit that stuck with me is (paraphrasing): As a storm unleashes its power outside, the drumming and the humming continue unperturbed inside. 

To this point, for those of you who may have noticed, I favor a purported quote by Galileo Galilei that is always included in several of our web pages and our exhibition catalogs. Galileo, when forced to recant his planetary observations under pressure from the Inquisition is said to have exclaimed: Eppur Si Muove. And Yet iI Moves. 

And so do we.

Michael Mehl

NB – In the begining there were three entities in the chambers. The God, the Magician, and the High Priest. The High Priest thought much of himself and hungered to be the leader. The Magician, unselfish, said to the God and the High Priest: Yes, of course, if that’s what you both want. The God, being a wise God, chose the Magician to lead with magic, and the High Priest to tend to scripture. That is what the God ordained and that is how it went. What is amusing is that unbeknownst to most, there was a mouse in the house who was privy to the parley. And that mouse is still moving along.

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