Geoff Winningham, one of Houston’s most renowned photographers, has taught photography at Rice for 50 years, along the way devoting four books to the Bayou City, which in many ways has been his muse.

A few years ago Winningham started prowling local neighborhoods, Leica in hand, with a new project in mind. It eventually became Changing Houston, partly inspired by Berenice Abbott’s famous book, Changing New York. Before long he had more than 1,500 photographs. While he might make a book out of this work in the future, for now Winningham has pared it down to the 300 images currently on display inside Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative, in a mosaic-style show. His project is funded by the Houston Arts Alliance.

Needless to say, we were intrigued. We called up Winningham, who was right in the middle of changing his car battery at the time—very on brand—and asked him to share some insight into the project, which, he said, explores, “more than anything else, the natural landscape and the built landscape, how they come together and are at odds with each other.” Here are six of the images on view at Rice, along with the photographer’s thoughts on what they reveal about our city.

► Changing Houston: Through March 17. Presented by Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University’s BioScience Research Collaborative, 6566 Main St. moody.rice.edu.