The second annual FotoWeek DC Festival starts up this Saturday, and the city is already overflowing with all things photography and more than enough arty events to go around. We’re featuring our picks in this week’s Arts Agenda, but take a gander at the FotoWeek website, blog, and even their mobile site if you want full details. It runs straight through next Saturday the 14th, so even the busiest art lovers should be able to find time to stop in an exhibit or two over the next week and a half.
The festival organizers have focused a lot of the main events in seven locations, including five in Georgetown (FotoWeek Central) as well the 1515 14th Street NW building and Pepco’s Edison Place Gallery in Chinatown. In addition to these featured events, most of the city’s galleries will be holding FotoWeek exhibits and lectures as well, including Honfleur, Hamiltonian, Studio, Zenith, the Corcoran, and pretty much every other gallery in town. Be sure to register online for quick entry to events and exhibits.
>> The FotoWeek opening reception and launch party is Friday beginning at 6:30 p.m. It costs just $15 online and $20 at the door, and will feature light food and cocktails, as well as this year’s award winners and a number of Pulitzer Prize winning and other heavyweight photographers. Entrance will include the four featured exhibit spaces in Georgetown from 3306 to 3338 M Street NW. Check in first at 3338 M Street NW. Register here to get on the guest list.
>> While you’re at the opening, or if you check out the Georgetown spaces any other night this weekend, you’ll notice Night Gallery DC displayed on the side of 3338 M Street, where digital video of FotoWeek finalists will be projected. A similar event will take place in Crystal City (at 2250 Crystal Drive) from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. Sunday through Tuesday.
>> Another option for Friday is U Street. Hamiltonian exhibits work from fellows Anne Chan and Michael Dax Iacovone from 7 to 9 p.m., and the Smith Farm Center for the Healing Arts shows Dulce Pinzón photography in The Real Story of the Superheroes from 6 to 8 p.m. The opening begins with an artist talk which will discuss how Pinzón’s work “introduces the Mexican immigrant in New York in a satirical documentary style featuring ordinary men and women in their work environment donning superhero garb.”
>> Saturday, start out in Dupont Circle or Adams Morgan in the afternoon, hitting up the Skynear store from 2 to 5 p.m. where two D.C. area photographers are featured in Zenith Gallery‘s Lenscape 2, or head to Studio Gallery from 4 to 6 p.m. for an opening with four photographers from New York and three from the District.
>> Then, head over to Northeast for Fixation at the new Industry Gallery on Florida Avenue. Ten Miles Square and the Pink Line Project are teaming up for their second annual event, which will present the work of nine local photographers whose works “create a narrative with a short series of images, differentiating the stereotypical image of our Nation’s Capital from the people actually living inside it.” Music starts at 6 p.m. with Yoko K, and continues with ayyoko confidential at 7:30 p.m., and Suspicious Package at 9 p.m. $10 suggested donation. Though not part of FotoWeek, Conner Contemporary will also have an opening downstairs with Koen Vanmechelen: Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (DC) (featuring, oh yes, live chickens).
