Paul Turounet | American, 1962 -
Paul Turounet received his MFA in Photography from the Yale University School of Art in 1995. For the following fifteen years, he photographed in Mexico along the U.S. - Mexico border, for which he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1997 and grants from the Trans-Border Institute in 2003 and 2004.
This work, including Estamos Buscando A, Bajo La Luna Verde and Tierra Brava, considers the psychology and culture of the U.S – Mexico border exclusively in Mexico and has been featured in various solo and group exhibitions in both the United States and Mexico, including the El Paso Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art - Tucson, the New Mexico State University Art Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Regis University in Denver, Colorado, the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson, Arizona, the University of Texas – Brownsville, Centro Cultural Tijuana in Tijuana, Mexico, and the Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
His 2016 self-published book, Estamos Buscando A, was shortlisted and a runner-up for the 2016 Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award, and was included on the New York Times – The Best Photo Books of 2016.
His most recent work, Somewhere Out There, Something Is Happening, is an ongoing series that explores our inherent spirit and the psyche of the contemporary American landscape during a time of hope and change and whether what is past is truly prologue. Selections of this work have been exhibited at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido, California as well as the Ogden Museum of Art in New Orleans, Louisiana. The work has also been developed into a series of handmade portfolio books, including Beneath the Dirt of Great Men, which contemplates the carbon landscape of oil production in the Permian Basin of West Texas.