CURRENT EXHIBITION

Bill Wood’s Business

May 16, 2008—September 7, 2008

Bill Wood’s business was photography. From 1937 through the early 1970s, the Bill Wood Photo Company supplied large-format, black-and- white photographs of whomever and whatever the people of Fort Worth, Texas, felt the need to picture and remember. Bill Wood’s Business, an exhibition and publication project organized by Diane Keaton and Marvin Heiferman, explores the genesis and encyclopedic range of his work. Bill Wood’s images became the raw materials used to meet his clients’ record-keeping and communication needs in an increasingly visual culture. He documented benchmark moments in the lives of Fort Worth’s middle class at anniversaries, family reunions, and weddings. For local businesses, he captured exuberant window displays and shiny new cars in showrooms. Revisited now from a broader historical perspective, Wood’s photographs highlight the central role photographic images played—and continue to play—in describing, reflecting, and defining the shape of everyday American business, life, and culture.

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