When in Roam - Glen Wilbert, Photography

About Glen Wilbert

Glen Wilbert is a Texas-based fine art photographer whose work distills the American landscape to its compositional essence, clean lines, deliberate geometry, and luminous color reduced to what matters most. Operating under the brand When in Roam, he creates minimalist photographs that sit at the intersection of travel photography, pop art, and geometric abstraction.

Glen is also a board-certified diagnostic radiologist (American Board of Radiology) and graduate of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas. Over two decades of professional image analysis, including fellowship training in MRI, trained his eye to identify meaningful patterns within visual noise. That same precision now informs every composition: where radiology demanded a search for what is wrong, photography allows him to search for what is right.

His artistic influences reflect this dual sensibility. From the documentary tradition, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore, he draws a peripatetic curiosity, the impulse to see familiar places with fresh eyes. From modern art, Piet Mondrian, Ed Ruscha, David Hockney, he takes a commitment to reduction, pattern, and playful geometry. The result is photography that reveals the hidden Mondrian in a California beach scene, the quiet graphic structure of a desert highway, the decisive moment where pattern and motion align.

Glen works across color and black-and-white registers. His color photographs are defined by a curated pastel palette, soft, luminous tones that connect California coastal imagery to a broader visual language of light and clarity. His black-and-white work strips scenes further, foregrounding contrast, silhouette, and graphic structure. Both approaches serve the same philosophy: distillation through refinement and reduction.

His work has earned national recognition, including First Place “Photographer of the Year 2024” at the iPhone Photography Awards (IPPAWARDS), multiple Gold Medals at the reFocus Awards, and selection for over thirty juried exhibitions across the United States, from the Soho Photo Gallery in New York to the Smithsonian-affiliated AnnMarie Sculpture Garden in Maryland.
Artist Statement

Distillation is the goal for my photography - the search to find the essence of a location through refinement and reduction. I see beauty in simplicity and composition, eliminating extraneous details while preserving recognizability - Minimalism takes the great American road trip.I enjoy adding a touch of whimsy to my photographs and the attempt to capture a “decisive moment” of an object in motion or in a momentary organization of pattern that completes a composition and brings an image to life.I am inspired by the peripatetic works of Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, and Stephen Shore - fresh eyes on old places. I love minimalism and pop art, particularly influential are Piet Mondrian, Ed Ruscha, and David Hockney. My photograph “Lifeguard Camp, SoCal” is one example of a combination of these influences in which I imagine what Mondrian would see while on a California vacation.

This artistic pursuit has been a welcome relief to my profession as a radiologist where I have spent a lifetime analyzing medical images for signs of pathology. It allows me to replace my search for what is wrong for a search for what is right.

Awards & Recognition

• First Place, “Photographer of the Year 2024,” iPhone Photography Awards (IPPAWARDS)
• First Place, Lifestyle Category, 2024 iPhone Photography Awards (IPPAWARDS)
• Gold Medal Winner, Fine Art Category, reFocus Awards 2024 Color Photography Contest
• Gold Medal Winner, Event Category, reFocus Awards 2024 Color Photography Contest
• First Place, Plano Art Association 125 Show 2024, Plano, TX
• Bronze Medal Winner, Photojournalism Category, reFocus Awards 2024 Color Photography Contest
• Bronze Medal Winner, Travel Category, reFocus 2023 Black and White Photo Contest
• Honorable Mention, People Category, reFocus Awards 2024 Color Photography Contest
• Honorable Mention, Special Effects, 2024 International Photography Awards
• Honorable Mention, Brownsville Museum of Fine Art 49th International Art Show, Brownsville, TX
• Finalist, Life Framers’ “COLORS” and “OPEN CALL” juried competitions

Selected Exhibitions

• “PROJECTING L.A. 2024,” Los Angeles, CA
• 2024 Soho Photo Gallery National Competition, New York, NY
• “POP Art with Mass Appeal,” AnnMarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center (In Association with the Smithsonian Institution), Solomons, MD
• Vanderbilt’s Sarratt Gallery Photography Exhibition, Nashville, TN
• Conroe Art League International 2026, Madelay Fine Art Gallery, Conroe, TX• Studio Montclair’s “Freedom Exhibition” 2026, Montclair, NJ
• The Center for Contemporary Art’s 2026 Juried International Exhibition, Bedminster, NJ
• 2024 Texas Photographic Society’s 36th Annual Members Only Show, The Arlington Museum of Art, Arlington, TX

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