Making a Scene! is the story of how visionary individuals created an international art world around the recorded image in Houston, Texas: a classic Texas tale of seemingly quixotic ideas, audacious goals, oil booms and busts, and generous patronage.

Beginning with the museum director Bill Agee's early dream of a department dedicated to the medium, a vibrant and engaged scene grew. What was once unimaginable became imaginable, and then continued to grow and flourish through the work of Anne Tucker at the Museum of Fine Arts, of local practitioners who created the Houston Center for Photography, and of Wendy Watriss and Fred Baldwin with Petra Benteler, who started the first international festival of the medium in the United States.