Artist's Talk Tony Mendoza

Tony Mendoza talks about Flowers--his lastest photographic project--and then signs copies of the recently released Flowers book. Most of the images in the series were taken in Columbus (some at the community garden plot in Grandview) and at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

Mendoza started work on the series in 2004 as his second foray into digital photography. (The first, he says, was "a disaster.") He credits his new allegiance to digital shooting and, especially, printing with turning him into a "born-again" photographer, reinvigorating his enthusiasm after more than thirty years in the field.

Mendoza, a professor in Ohio State's art department, is known for such photographic projects and books as Ernie: A Photographer's Memoir (1985), which chronicles his life with a loftmate cat in New York, and Cuba: Going Back (1999), an account in images and words of his first visit to his native Cuba in 36 years. His photographs are in the collections of major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.