five photographers: Denise prince, teresa rafidi, shawn saumell, marilyn waligore, byrd williams iv
January 18, 2025 - February 22, 2025
Press Release
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Ro2 Art Reintroduces Five Photographers: A Celebration of the Expansive Possibilities of Photography
(Dallas) Ro2 Art is excited to announce the return of Five Photographers, a biennial group exhibition showcasing the dynamic breadth of contemporary fine art photography. Opening January 18, 2025, and on view through February 22, this carefully curated exhibition brings together five distinguished Texas-based artists: Denise Prince, Teresa Rafidi, Shawn Saumell, Marilyn Waligore, and Byrd Williams IV. In a time when visual culture is dominated by fleeting, oversaturated digital imagery, Five Photographers offers a counterpoint—a thoughtful exploration of photography as a nuanced and evolving art form. This exhibition underscores the genre’s ability to transcend documentation and become a means of inquiry, transformation, and connection. Each artist in the show presents a distinct approach, representing a cross-section of photographic genres and practices that challenge conventional boundaries and reveal the medium’s limitless potential.
“Photography has always been more than a tool of documentation—it is a language, a way to see the world differently,” says Jordan Roth, Director of Ro2 Art. “With this iteration of Five Photographers, we wanted to highlight the extraordinary range of practices within fine art photography today, from conceptual experimentation to deeply personal storytelling. This group of artists not only represents the diversity of the medium but also reflects its relevance in shaping how we interpret and engage with the world around us.” As visitors move through the exhibition, they will encounter works that are at once introspective and outward-looking, cerebral and visceral, tangible and transcendent. Together, these five artists challenge us to expand our understanding of what photography can be and what it can achieve in the context of contemporary art. Opening January 18, 2025, Five Photographers will be on view at Ro2 Art Gallery, 2606 Bataan St., Dallas, TX, through February 22, 2025. The public is invited to an opening reception on Saturday, January 18, from 7-10 PM. Press Release |
About the Artists
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The exhibition features the following distinguished photographers:
Denise Prince Denise Prince is an Austin-based, American artist concentrating in painting, photography and film. She is known for using the visual language of advertising to explore existence in relation to Desire. Influenced by critical theory at CalArts in Los Angeles, she has worked closely with clinical philosopher and Lacanian psychoanalyst Charles Merward since 2007. Her work has been clarified, confronted, and interpreted by psychoanalyst members of the World Association of Psychoanalysis, is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has been exhibited internationally and has been featured on PBS Television and in Vogue Magazine. Teresa Rafidi Teresa Rafidi lives and works in Dallas, Texas. She received her BFA from Southern Methodist University. Teresa’s love of the image began when her parents gave her a Kodak Disc camera as a kid. She would shoot from the car window and was amazed with the images and how “reality” was not as it appeared in the finished shot. This sparked her love for photography. Now she and her camera are inseparable. Some of her photographs are in ordinary places, shifting attention away from the subject matter and redirecting the focus. Her images illuminate the space and hint of a figurative presence not always seen. Traces are apparent with scrutiny as the absence unfolds. She uses light and movement as her themes, revealing subtle fragments of perception and the visceral pleasures of experiencing a particular moment. Her other photography delves into light in different ways, with her love of portraiture and documenting the world around her as she is inspired by the exploration of her subjects in space. Her work is exhibited in museums, galleries and private collections. Shawn Saumell Shawn Saumell is an ALAANA artist born in New York and currently lives and works in Dallas. He received an MFA from Lesley University College of Arts and Design fka The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, BFA from Texas Woman’s University, magna cum laude, and an AA from Collin College, cum laude. Saumell's work has been featured in over 230 exhibitions worldwide and has won many international awards including, but not limited to:"First Place," "Director's Choice," "Photographer of the Year," "Best of Biennial," "100 Best International," "Top 50 MFA Painters in America," "Top 25 International Fine Artists," and "Best of Show." He has had a recent solo exhibition at the Mesquite Arts Center, Mesquite, TX [2024]; and recent juried exhibitions at the Limner Gallery, Hudson, NY [2024] and The Patterson-Appleton Arts Center Gough Gallery, Denton, TX [2024]; as well as recent group exhibitions at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA [2024], Arts Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX [2024], and Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Rochester, NY [2024]. Shawn’s work has been selected by notable curators and organizations, including Chrissie Iles of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Julia Dolan of the Portland Art Museum, Jeremy Strick of the Nasher Sculpture Center, Cris Worley of Cris Worley Gallery, and editors of Diffusion Magazine and F-STOP Magazine, among others. His work is in the permanent collection of the Boston Public Library, Boston, MA; The State of New Mexico, NM; the Limner Gallery, Hudson, NY; Shah Alam Gallery, Malaysia; Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, CO; Brooklyn Art Library, Brooklyn, NY; Carrington Coleman, Dallas, TX; Dallas College, Dallas, TX; and Independent Financial, McKinney, TX. Marilyn Waligore Marilyn Waligore is an artist working in photography and digital media who lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. She currently is Professor of Visual and Performing Arts / Photography at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she has directed the photography program since 1989. She previously served as Assistant Professor of Painting and Photography at The College of Wooster in Ohio. Waligore received an MFA degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and undergraduate degrees in Art and in English from the University of California-Berkeley. Her articles on photography have appeared in Leonardo and Photography Quarterly, and she has curated and co-curated group exhibitions for the Bathhouse Cultural Center, in Dallas, the University of Texas at Dallas, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, New York, and the Museo de La Ciudad and Casa de la Cultura in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico. Her photographs and online media projects have been exhibited widely, including the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain, the Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden, National Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand, SIGGRAPH, Los Angeles, California, the New York Digital Salon, School of Visual Arts, New York, New York, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, New York, the Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Houston Center for Photography, Houston, Texas, the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, California, the Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio, A.R.C, Artists/Residents of Chicago, Illinois, and the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Denver, Colorado. In Texas she has exhibited at Ro2 Gallery, the Latino Cultural Center, the Bathhouse Cultural Center, and Vignette in Dallas, Artspace 111, and Fort Worth Community Arts Center, in Fort Worth, and in Austin at the Laguna Gloria Art Museum, Women & Their Work, and in the Texas Biennial, Mexican American Cultural Center. She is a recipient of grants and awards, including an Artist Fellowship in Visual Arts from the Ohio Arts Council, the Arts Midwest/ National Endowment of the Arts Regional Visual Arts Fellowship in Photography, and the Moss/Chumley North Texas Artist Award in Photography and New Genres. Her work is included in collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the National Museum of Women in the Arts Archive, Washington, D.C., and in Texas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Longview Art Museum, Longview. She is represented by Ro2 Gallery in Dallas, Texas. https://www.marilynwaligore.com Byrd Williams IV Byrd Williams IV, an esteemed photographer and educator, is celebrated for his evocative large-format triptychs and striking urban imagery. His work, deeply rooted in narrative and historical significance, is featured in prominent collections such as the Amon Carter Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In 2014, the University of North Texas Libraries acquired his family's archive of over 300,000 images, documenting four generations of photographic innovation and cementing their enduring legacy in the medium. A graduate of Texas Wesleyan University (B.A.), Texas Christian University (B.B.A.), and Southern Methodist University (M.F.A.), Byrd’s academic journey reflects his commitment to the arts. He has taught at prestigious institutions, including Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in Germany, SMU in Dallas, and Schloss Balmoral in Germany, where he was also an Artist in Residence. Byrd’s accolades include the Wm. E. Jary, Jr. Memorial Award and the Paul R. Voertman Lecture Award. His work resides in esteemed collections worldwide, from the Stadtischen Museum Simeonstift in Germany to the Republic Bank Permanent Collection in Texas. |
ARTIST Statements
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Denise Prince
Prince carves a line from the imagination of what being an adult will be like to its limit, the memory of the missing thing. As youths we imagine what lies ahead in a way that is deeply imaginary but in the end it reflects the way we will also make sense of life as adults. Even as children we often sense the mismatch between what we are told and shown life is and our inner experience. The conflict is part of a re-cognition of desire (the memory of the missing thing.) As we mature and begin to read one another and present ourselves as objects, the performative elements along with imaginary hierarchies of value complicate our ability to differentiate between what is real and what isn’t. We grow increasingly self deceptive, imagining others take us for who we imagine ourselves to be (and also being painfully aware that we are not that thing). Papered over is the capability that comes with exorcising the signified within the story of ourselves. Prince makes these concerns explicit, demonstrating preferences for pretends, the effects of Desire. By tossing the defense against fundamental anxiety away, phantoms become figments. She tunes towards buoyancy and recasts lack as path for its unavoid/ability to create value. Teresa Rafidi My work questions the interconnection of figures and space, developing parallels between the present, past, and reality. The textures and shapes draw me in, unveiling faint remnants of forgotten moments. The air becomes fluid, sounds are light, and scents linger as my awareness unfolds in a space. Walking the streets of Berlin, I saw the striking contrast between the historical and modern, the myriad cultures, and the blended layers they create. I sought to explore the convergence between the present and past, and the faint figures captured in my images. In this dream-like state, we share an experience in this place then and now, reflecting on the fragility of our existence. Shawn Saumell I find it interesting how various humans may have different perceptions of the same action, place, and time. It’s as if we have unique lenses of perception. We all seem to have our own individual realities reciprocating between our senses and memories. I find myself searching for what is real. How do(or don’t) humans coexist and yet have different experiences, perceptions, and recollections? What is real, physical reality versus our experience and perception, or something beyond our consciousness? How are we different physically, mentally, historically, and genetically? How can we shed our differences, or can we? How may we see through what makes us to discover what is and whom we are? Through my art, I explore the physical versus mental. Objects versus ideas. Ideas through objects. The object of ideas. Objects as conduits for ideas or image/object as a means of understanding something beyond the familiar, from the familiar. It isn’t what it is and is what it isn’t. In my work, I primarily repurpose found objects from nature and human-made. These mundane materials are usually banal, overlooked, and of no monetary value. The objects are removed from their original context and assembled and sculpted in constructed environments. Photography is used in a nontraditional manner, as to not point and record physical reality but rather to use the medium as a tool of creativity to produce unique imagery of the mind, thoughts, ideas, dreams, and concepts. Where did we come from and where are we going? How can we save what’s left of our present and preserve our future? How may we grow beyond ignorance, yet live in happy healthy bliss? What is to become of us and might we learn our individual purposes, as well as our collective purpose? How may we evolve, and revolve? Is it possible or am I chasing a ghost? Is this journey one of fertility or one of futility? These are not easy one-answer questions and I am not a one-trick pony. As my curiosities, experiments, and explorations continue, so does my work. Please take my hand and join me in my walk, if you will. Marilyn Waligore ‘Fantastic Sea Creatures’ My transformation of aluminum detritus into fantastic underwater sea creatures refers to the contrast between our disregard for the environment and our simultaneous dependence upon it for our survival. Aluminum packaging becomes symbolic of our use of natural resources as the images suggest fanciful options for the recycling of post-consumer waste. These photographs document objects that are assembled to create sculptural forms. Collected during walks in my neighborhood, this litter can be described as the “trash of trash.” I affirm the materiality of objects that we tend to “delete” from our visual field, despite their prevalence in our urban environments. I hope to encourage an embrace of the potential actions of reduce, reuse, recycle, and conserve, while fostering reconsideration of our daily habits, and their eventual global impact. In my staged photographs, I constructed these undersea worlds to reference our impact on the environment, using aluminum packaging to describe aquatic creatures. The fluid, silvery background echoes the resting place for litter, namely our local streams and lakes. The sculptural forms suggest the possibilities of these aluminum cast-offs. Meanwhile, my landscape photographs record similar objects that have traveled through gutters and sewer drains to become lodged along local creek beds. Specific locations are marked with GPS coordinates, to draw the connection between commonplace discarded items and their ultimate final resting place in our environment. Through my artwork, I explore the powers of attraction and repulsion and reflect on questions relating to sustainability. Using digital technology, I embrace process and materiality to underscore the physical nature of things that exist in a transitory state, in order to elevate, to impart value. I aim to turn trash into treasure to prompt changes in social behavior. Byrd Williams IV ‘CRIME SCENES AND FLOOR PORTRAITS’ Growing up as the fourth generation in a family of photographers, I was exposed to a broad range of subject matter, from art to commercial and documentary work. My father occasionally photographed crime scenes for the Fort Worth Police, and as a child, I witnessed the process of developing these haunting images in our lab. These scenes, vivid with violence and tragedy, left a lasting impression on me—not because of their horror, but because of the strange, almost surreal stillness they seemed to convey. One of the things that has stayed with me is the way victims fell—often with an involuntary grace, as though caught in the choreography of their final moments. Their bodies seemed to express both elegance and resignation, a haunting contrast to the brutality that caused their stillness. As a child, I struggled to reconcile the stark violence of these events with the quiet beauty in how the scenes unfolded. It was not humor I found, but an awkward, deeply unsettling tension between what was happening and how it appeared. In this series, I am revisiting that tension—not to simulate violence, but to explore the emotional weight of silence and stillness in the face of destruction. These images are not about individuals lost to crime; they are metaphors for whole communities under attack. They speak to the oppression and silencing of marginalized groups—immigrants, LGBTQ people, women, and people of color—by forces that seek to control and suppress. The work is a reflection on resignation and resistance, on how beauty and dignity can emerge even amidst destruction. These floor portraits are about more than what we see—they are about what lingers, the echoes of voices stifled but not erased. |
Installation Images
More coming soon...
