The Month Of Photography

Every other March, the City of Denver celebrates The Month of Photography, and almost all art galleries in the region feature photography exhibits during this period.  There was a big article in the entertainment section of the Denver Post about it yesterday, and so I decided to check some of these galleries out.  I started at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, which was featuring a collection of abstract photographs in conjunction with the Clifford Still Museum.  That is not my thing, so I next headed to the McNichols Building, an exhibition space owned by the city.  One floor featured fashion photography, and the other floor collages and mixed media.  The main thing I got out of this exhibit was "Hey, I could do this too!" Get some old copies of Life Magazine, cut out various images, add a few photos of my own, put a little oil paint on the canvas, and voila, you have yourself a piece of art, like the ones in the above photo collage (second row on the right - priced at $3,200 - and third row on the left).

Next I visited the Denver Art Museum, but they had no special exhibition and were still featuring a show on Dior dresses (as seen in the last row of the above photo collage).  It isn't art, but it was a sellout that day, and such a moneymaker funds other future exhibits, like the Monet collection coming in October.  You do what you have to do, I guess. Next I went to the Redline Gallery (the entrance of which can be seen in the far upper right of the photo above).  I was very impressed by a young photographer named Colby Deal. One of his works can be seen in the second row on the left of the above image.  He grew up in Houston, and he combines both street photograph and portraiture to show the beauty and vibrancy that can be found in lower income neighborhoods like the one where he grew up. Check out some of his images at https://www.deepredpress.com/features/2017/9/5/colby-deal

Finally I visited the Vicki Myhren Gallery, located in the Shwayder Art Building (seen in the far top left) on the University of Denver Campus.  The exhibit there is titled Ghostly Traces, and features photographs and collages of  people from the past, as well as other photographs exploring our mortality.  In the photograph in the third row on the right can be seen photographs by Torben Eskerod of photos put on gravestones in a famous Rome cemetery, which I thought were quite good.  There were also photographs from Sally Mann's series titled Body Farm, featuring the photographs of corpses at the University of Tennessee's forensic anthropology research facility.  The photograph called Laughing Corpse is quite startling, but I decided not to feature it here.  And you are certainly welcome.

The Month of Photography continues through March and April, with photographs on display at hundreds of sites. Many of these photographs are truly great.  An online gallery of these images can be found at https://www.mopdenver.com/mop-2019.  Be sure to check them out!