There are plenty of photography shows taking place along the Front Range right now. It is, after all, the biennial Month of Photography in Colorado, and more than 70 exhibition spaces have joined the effort this time around, from museums and galleries to coffeehouses, bookstores and frame shops. There is a photo display for every taste out there — and all at once.
And it is fair to say that most of them are more deluxe than “Colorado Perspectives: Visions in Photography,” the exhibition organized by the city’s Department of Arts & Venues. The show has limited signage to help visitors understand the works and a very loose curatorial aim of demonstrating the “diverse range of artistic visions, compelling compositions and mastery of craft” being produced by photographers around the state. This is a sprawling show with dozens of pictures.
Most challenging of all is the venue, the cavernous third floor of the McNichol’s Building in Civic Center. A former Carnegie library that has been converted into city offices and large event venues, McNichols is, no doubt, an important architectural treasure. But it is a disastrous place to show art. The ceilings are too high, the lighting is impossible to control and the walls are interrupted by windows, columns and emergency exits. It is difficult to get into the groove of any exhibition produced there.
And yet, “Colorado Perspectives” has exactly that — a good rhythm that pulls visitors into the pulse of fine art photography and the dance that shooters do to capture familiar places from innovative vantage points. Colorado viewers will recognize many scenes depicted in the show, but they will feel different.
One clear example: Armando Martinez’s “Dealer Flower,” which captures the cars parked in an auto dealer’s sales lot — but from above, using a camera attached to a drone. From the ground, the scene would look like an ordinary dealership with the products positioned in a way that shows off their best assets to potential buyers. But from above, the cars come together to take the shape of a flower, with petals shooting out from the center in perfect, 360-degree precision.
That is one type of perspective show organizer Michael Chavez was going for when he assembled this exhibit of work by Colorado photographers. He also gives us glimpses of nature, people, buildings and urban street corners that are equally unexpected.
“Colorado Perspectives” is very good at showing what can make a photograph a work of art rather than a document of facts. The images here are not meant to show the state’s natural grandeur, its towering mountains or its big skies. There is nothing resembling the hugely popular landscape scenes shot by the late legend John Fielder.
Instead, we get Lakewood photographer Matthew Steaffens’s unique take on the annual “Stockshow Ride,” where cowboys of every stripe parade through downtown Denver saddled up on their prized livestock. Steaffens gives us a horse-eye view of the moment, pulling the attention off the event’s pageantry and focusing his lens on the countenance of one fancy horse. If animals have souls, this photo aims to prove it by inviting us to experience the parade through the eyes of a wordless participant.
It is hard work to make a photo like that — it takes patience, a keen eye and an open visual mind — and the exhibit is defined by such extreme efforts. Photographer Susan Artaechevarria, who lives in Center, spends long hours in rural Colorado looking for interesting takes on natural vistas, sometimes in the dead of winter.
Her image, titled “Fox in Snow,” is one of the show’s best. It depicts a lone fox standing in a flat field covered in snow. The background is relentlessly white, and it is hard make out anything in this picture beyond the silhouette of the fox. But it gets at both the vastness of the terrain and the difficult conditions that wildlife experiences here. It resists uplifting nature and focuses on the workmanship required for simply being a fox.
“Colorado Perspectives” has plenty of variety, both in subject matter and in photo processes. There are giclée prints, archival digital prints, inkjet prints and more in the mix. Many of the photos are straightforward images, others can go far into abstraction. Sometimes, they are too much of a mystery since there is minimal information available to know where a shot was taken or when.
Despite that free-wheeling nature, it comes together cohesively and, I have to say, enjoyably. Part of that comes from a high-level of talent throughout the presenters. They are all members of the nonprofit Colorado Photographic Arts Center — these are the hardworking image-makers who take their craft seriously, usually in the name of art, rather than any financial profit.
But it also recognizes the depth of beauty and wonder that exists here — if you look. It encourages us to see beyond the obvious, larger-than-life attributes that make Colorado so famously attractive to both residents and outsiders. It cuts through the challenges of bad lighting and awkward emergency exits and asks us to focus on small things rather than big things. It is inspiring.
“Colorado Perspectives: Visions in Photography,” continues through July 9 at the McNichols building in Civic Center. It’s free. More info: mcnicholsbuilding.com.
