Fotoseptiembre kicks off in San Antonio

“Back when I started the festival, I wrote that photography was the most pervasive art form of society. It was nothing surprising because you could see the moment coming,” Mehl, Fotoseptiembre director and founder, said. “Electronics have made us a visual society.”

Now people can take pictures with camera phones, upload images to Facebook and share them on Flickr. Anyone can take and share a photograph.

Mehl's Fotoseptiembre also is prolific and democratic. Seeping into late August and early November, the festival features works of roughly 65 photographers and 50 different venues. If people can meet the deadline requirements, they can be involved.

“One of the important things about our festival is that we really pride ourselves in being inclusive and eclectic,” Mehl said. “It was really important that if we were a festival, we would be artist-driven.”

That involves including as many exhibits as possible not making judgments of who can participate; and giving the public free access to exhibits. It's what Mehl calls a “plug-and-play” festival.

Exhibits also aren't in traditional galleries. Photos will hang in restaurants and offices, the city's airport and the Episcopal Church of Reconciliation. There are even exhibits in New Braunfels and Boerne.

The photos can be documentary-style or creative endeavors. Ramin Samandari has a Fotoseptiembre event at his Blue Star studio space, Magical Realism, and a non-Fotoseptiembre exhibit at the Joan Grona Gallery.

Samandari's works at Magical Realism are large black-and-white digital prints of clouds. The ones at Joan Grona depict local and Austin demonstrations after the presidential election in Iran, in which incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged as the victor under a cloud of international suspicion.

Clouds were something Samandari noticed during his childhood in Iran. He left Iran at 17, a year before the country's monarchy was overthrown.