“Eye on Third Ward: Jack Yates High School Photography” at MFAH

Ask photographer/high school student Tabatha Gabriel how she got the photo Overweight, and she’ll tell you. “We were walking through the Cuny Homes and there was this gentleman sitting on a step. At first I didn’t want to take his picture, but then I thought, ‘Why should I not want to take his picture just because he’s overweight?’ And then I saw he had a cane, so I thought, ‘How could he let himself get like this? What is really going on? Was it a depression or what?’ So I took it.” (While she might not be very PC, Gabriel is, nonetheless, insightful.)

Gabriel is one of just 13 students to earn a spot in this year’s “Eye on Third Ward: Jack Yates High School Photography” exhibit; four of the 29 photos are on display are hers.

She recounts the story behind What’s Your Twenty?, the photo of a worn and weathered wanted poster showing a man accused of killing six women. “To me, it seems as if it was something that had been forgotten. I know what it is to lose a loved one, and to me it was like, this man took the lives of six women and he’s out free, but kids have lost their mother and mothers have lost daughters. They’re sitting there mourning, while the killer is out free. The poster is old, and to me it was like, ‘Oh, well. He killed them. They didn’t find him. Oh, well, let it go.’ On that photo, I wanted to bring it into the present, to tell people, he’s still out there. We all still need to be looking for this face.” 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 12:15 to 7 p.m. Sundays. Through May 26. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-639-7771 or visit www.mfah.org. $3.50 to $7, free on Thursdays.
Tuesdays-Sundays. Starts: Feb. 10. Continues through May 26, 2008