Fikry Botros: Sidewalks (FotoFest 2016 Biennial at Archway Gallery)

Archway Gallery presents Sidewalks, featuring photographs by Fikry Botros. The exhibition is part of the city-wide ‘Participating Spaces’ celebrating the FotoFest 2016 Biennial and will be on view April 2 – May 5, 2016.  Now in its 18th year, FotoFest is the United States’ largest and longest-running international photography festival.

The artist will be on hand to visit with guests during the exhibition opening reception on Saturday, April 2, 2016 from 5 – 8 p.m. at the gallery.

The photographs in this exhibit were taken by the artist as he explored daily life on the sidewalks of various cities around the world. Botros’ favorite photographs are those where the scene is unperturbed and uninfluenced by his presence. He enjoys the challenge of having little, or no, control over the lighting, the action or the angle.

Botros explains, “I love how photographs extract scenes from their context and how their limitation to represent only one combination of light and dark and focus creates a different visual impact than what we see by our continuously darting eyes.”

Botros tends to prefer black and white when photographing people but he also uses color when it complements the subject. Three of the photographs in this exhibit have been selected by National Geographic as part of the “Daily Dozen” and “Photo-of-the-Day” features.

Based in Houston, Botros is an engineer by education and spent his entire working career in the Oil and Gas industry. He is a resident member of Archway Gallery.

A collection of his photographs is available at his website (www.fbotros.com).