By Kim McDarison

While the Fran Achen Juried Photography Exhibition has been a staple at the Whitewater Arts Alliance for 15 years, this year, following the end of the show in July, alliance members introduced the first-ever glossy catalog, which features photography exhibited in the show, along with historical information about the show, Achen, and the arts alliance.

Publishing a catalog including works exhibited in the Fran Achen show has been in his mind for several years, Jeff McDonald, who has served as the show’s chair for a decade, said. This year, McDonald said, with aid from community members, and with help from the alliance’s new director, Kim Adams, the coffee-table-quality booklet became a reality.

“I wanted people to have a tangible thing,” McDonald said of his vision to distribute the catalog to the show’s participating photographers.

McDonald said, when looking at photographs for inclusion in this year’s juried show, the judges favored photographs which fell within a category of “fine art,” as opposed to documentary photography, although some documentary photographs did make the cut.

The collection of photographs lends itself to intriguing depictions of color and imagination.

“Fine art has very few rules,” he said.

Copies were distributed and enough were printed to offer the mementos to members of the general public for $10 a copy. Proceeds will be placed in the alliance’s general operating fund, with monies earmarked for a variety of uses, from paying rent for gallery space, to funding future alliance programming and activities, many of which are free and open to the public, McDonald, who also serves this year as the alliance’s board president, said.

The work of this year’s exhibition winners, along with all of the exhibition’s selected entries, is featured in the catalog. Within its 27 pages, viewers will find high-resolution renditions of first-place winner Kristine Hinrichs’ photograph, titled: “Open Doors,” second-place winner Michael Knapstein’s piece, titled: “Mini Donuts,” third-place winner Timothy Holte’s entry, titled: “Love is in the Air — Foggy Morning,” and 10 works provided by entrants who received honorable mention recognition.

Within the catalog, describing his experience as longtime chair, McDonald wrote: “Reviewing the many, varied, excellent submissions is an inspiring and exciting experience that expands my visual literacy.”

This year, the show received an “all-time high number of entries,” he wrote, noting that the surge in interest was in stark contrast to the COVID years of 2020 and 2021, when, he wrote, “we barely squeaked through.”

McDonald wrote that the event has attracted regional artists from such places as Wausau, Rockford, Milwaukee and Madison. The catalog shares some 95 photographs produced by 39 artists.

Within the catalog, viewers will find attention paid to the show’s namesake: Fran Achen, a Kenosha native, born in 1916, who made his home in Whitewater, first as a student, enrolling in the then-Whitewater State Teacher’s College, today known as the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, in 1938, where he served as a photographer for the school’s newspaper and served as a freelance photographer for the Janesville Gazette. Achen left Whitewater to serve during World War II. A photograph within the catalog captures the photographer as a soldier in Normandy in 1944.

Following the war, Achen worked at a photography studio in Madison before he purchased one in downtown Whitewater, where he worked for 11 years. From 1956 to the time of his retirement in 1979, Achen served as a teacher at Whitewater High School and served as an audio-visual director within the Janesville school district.

While he retired from his career, he continued to enjoy life as a photographer, the catalog reports, noting that in the 1980s, Achen donated some 400 custom prints to the Irvin L. Young Memorial Library in Whitewater.

A collection of Achen’s photography also is in the possession of the UW-Whitewater, the catalog states.

The catalog includes several photos capturing the life of Achen.

A history of the Whitewater Arts Alliance also is included in the booklet, documenting the organization’s beginnings in 2004, with participation from group members during the revitalization of the “Prairie Tillers” mural, created by artist Caryl Yasko in Whitewater’s downtown, to the group’s upcoming 20th anniversary which will be celebrated in 2025.

To learn more about the nonprofit, members-driven Whitewater Arts Alliance, its programming, the Fran Achen catalog, and the organization’s upcoming anniversary, including its celebratory plans, visit the organization’s website: https://www.whitewaterarts.org/.