These days, everyone has a camera. Cameras are built into cellphones, and high-quality digital cameras are available to people who want to shoot everything from their beach vacations to the cakes they decorate and blog about.

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The ninth annual Joyce Elaine Grant Photography Exhibition at Texas Woman’s University includes Mother and Daughter,, a portrait taken in Romania by TWU graduate student Elizabeth Claffey

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The photograph has never been more powerful, and it’s never been easier to create and send across the world.

“One of the wonderful things about photography is the way it allows one to confer importance on things that might otherwise go unnoticed,” photographer Keliy Anderson-Staley said.

Her exhibit, “Off the Grid,” opens Tuesday alongside the Joyce Elaine Grant Photography Exhibition at Texas Woman’s University.

In its ninth year, the national exhibition shows a marriage between art and technology, and is a window into the lives of fine art photographers.

Photographer Corey Keller was the juror for the exhibition. Keller is an associate curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Keller selected the show, which brought in entries from 120 photographers. She selected the show as a blind juror, without any biographical information on the artists.

“I deliberately chose to look at the work even before I looked at the artist’s name, so I wasn’t influenced by any outside factors,” Keller said. “I chose strictly based on what I considered to be the best work. As it turns out, a considerable number of the artists I chose were women.”

The TWU exhibit wasn’t founded to showcase female talent exclusively, but women have been the force behind the formation. They’ve earned a place in the shows and have picked up the solo show awards.

The winner of the 2010 Solo Show was Anderson-Staley, a New York photographer who painstakingly documents the lives of modern homesteaders — people who choose to live without plumbing or electricity — in Maine.

A treasure trove of dramatic photos from that project, “Off the Grid,” mixes portraiture with Anderson-Staley’s study of the landscapes and home lives of the homesteaders.

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The ninth annual Joyce Elaine Grant Photography Exhibition at Texas Woman’s University Dream Home IV (Gentry East, Bloomington, IND, below, Ryan Mandell’ssurreal view of a suburban home.

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“I think that photography is a medium in which women artists have flourished,” Keller said. “I’m always interested in areas where women take activities that are considered to be feminine — meant in a restrictive sense — and turn them on their heads.

“I’m thinking of someone like Faith Ringgold, for example, who works with quilts,” Keller said. “In photography, there have been a number of women who have explored what we might call ‘the domestic sphere’ — the home, the family, the areas of daily life that are thought to belong to women — and have done so in a very provocative way. They take the ubiquitous family snapshot as a starting point, but transform it into something much larger.”

The show was established in 2001 by a small group of TWU graduate students, and it was named for the mother of TWU photography professor Susan kae Grant.

From the inside, the exhibit is a valuable experience for graduate students, all of whom work on the show in some capacity.

“The Joyce Elaine Grant exhibition is part of our course requirement,” said exhibition coordinator Elizabeth Claffey, a master of fine arts student. Each student in the creative photography class has to take part in the exhibit.

“I took on coordinating,” Claffey said. “Last year I was the installation coordinator. I learned so much in that position that I really wanted to take this on. Whether it’s coordinating an exhibition or managing the artists in the show, it’s a great learning experience. I was really interested in learning how things like this are done.”

Claffey said it was a privilege to work with Keller.

“Corey Keller is really kind of defining what photography looks like right now — that’s what I think,” she said. “I wasn’t present when she was selecting the exhibit, but I still got this great opportunity.”

Claffey said the exhibit is a mix of digital and traditional photography. The photographers produced both abstract and representational photos.

“When [the exhibition] came to fruition, and we put the entire show together, it was this mix of digital work, some traditional techniques,” she said. “It has kind of a contemplative feel to it to me, and awareness of the moment.”

Keller said she was impressed by the variety of subjects, processes and approaches among the entries.

“It was an exceptionally diverse group of submissions,” she said, “which gives me great hope for the future of photography.”

LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is cbreeding@dentonrc.com .

• What: Ninth annual Joyce Elaine Grant Photography Exhibition and “Off the Grid,” a solo exhibition by Keliy Anderson-Staley

• When: An opening reception will be from 4 to 6 p.m. Tuesday. The exhibits run Jan. 26 through Feb. 17. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, and on weekends by appointment.

• Where: East and West galleries on the first floor of the TWU art building, at Oakland Street and Pioneer Circle

• Details: Admission is free. For a weekend appointment, call 940-898-2530.