All tagged Month of Photography Denver

Pamela Connolly

Pamela Connolly

Dana Stirling

WISHMAKER | As a child, I spent endless hours roaming the maze of rooms in my parents' "Ethan Allen" furniture store. The shapes and patterns that filled these constructed spaces became imprinted in my consciousness. Even our family home growing up was a replica of a fantasy, a duplicate of the store, a stage selling hopes and dreams.

Much of my photographic work is in response to these childhood impressions. Through furniture, spaces, and interior decoration, I have been exploring the themes of home, childhood, aging, and the yearning between the imaginary and the real.

Confined to my house during the Pandemic, I immersed myself in a

project photographing 1960's litho-printed tin dollhouses. These toys were designed and marketed to baby-boomer girls growing up in the many suburbs across the US. Printed on the walls of these miniature houses are illustrations of the elements necessary for a successful, fulfilling life: red geraniums on the kitchen window, coordinated curtains, tasteful artwork, rose-covered arbors… Included in the box, colorful plastic furniture and fixtures to complete the fantasy.

A dollhouse is a microcosm of hopes and dreams, the pocket female fantasy.

Although I did not own one of these tin dream houses growing up, they are of my own childhood. I can't help but observe that the backgrounds are rendered in the same aesthetic as my parents' furniture store and home. Peering through the windows like an oversized Alice in Wonderland, I roam through these tiny spaces with my camera, transported back in time to a childhood that took place in showrooms and dreams. www.pamconnollyphoto.com

Lesley MacGregor

Lesley MacGregor

Dana Stirling

Memories Recorded in Water | These two series, Pattern Separation and Tales of the Sea, explore how we move through our lives, finding patterns where none seem to exist, sculpting from them a narrative of our experiences. The ocean is the perfect medium for these thoughts, ceaselessly changing yet comfortingly the same.

Pattern Separation is a meditation on being in lockdown: as the days slid by, one becoming another with nothing to mark the progression from week to week, time ran together. Psychologists call this inability to differentiate memories pattern separation. The series juxtaposes identical backgrounds of water, with the working boats whose differences become clear only as you observe them more carefully. Together they are a reminder of when time stood still and I clung to the small differences — a red hull or blue, a barge or a freighter — to mark the passage of time in an unending sea of repetition.

In Tales of the Sea, old sail boat hulls, resting in dry dock bear the story of every voyage they’ve taken, etched by currents, waves, and debris. The pattern of accumulated memories, written in chipped paint and rust stains, bookends the ocean itself, author and scribe of their adventures. The initial impression of shape, colour, and space provides an emotional tapestry for the series before these abstractions resolve themselves into specific representations.

Both series express my interest in how our memories reshape our past, how we narrate our lives based on experiences rather than on objective facts, how each of us builds our own fragile reality. My photographs take this internally constructed world and make it external with photographs that feel like thoughts, slightly untethered from the real world, showing my unique way of seeing. www.lesleymacgregor.com

Karen Osdieck

Karen Osdieck

Dana Stirling

Modern Boyhood | ‘Modern Boyhood’ is a long-term project documenting the personal journey of my children while navigating complexities of early adolescence. Childhood is a confusing time and I feel it is important for my two boys to openly explore their identity without restrictions and preconceptions. While my husband and I encourage our boys to be true to who they are, the media and societal views play a huge role in shaping our youth. Our culture is moving toward embracing a less rigid version of masculinity and accepting alternative parenting styles but it is not yet the norm. Through these images, I am examining their behaviors both innate and learned while teaching the importance of empathy, vulnerability and self expression.

Struggling with speech delays, both boys grew up knowing they were different from other children. Early on, I realized how important confidence is to their development. Crying, admitting fear and having interests deemed feminine are not signs of weakness inside our household. Now, as they venture out on their own, they are becoming aware of how they are perceived by their peers and expected male behavior. My hope is that they retain the courage and confidence to measure themselves by their own standards.

This series began as a way to hold on to this liminal state of innocence. Fading in and out of their consciousness and only stepping in when needed. It became a way to cope with my anxiety of not knowing the future and hoping I have done enough. For these moments I am invisible.

This project is ongoing. www.karenosdieckphotography.com

Wendy Constantine

Wendy Constantine

Dana Stirling

Reverie | Reverie inhabits the space between reality and dreams. One foot is firmly planted on terra firma, and the other steps through an otherworldly portal filled with melancholy wonder. This body of work is a personal fairytale, depicting a landscape of loss in a luminous, panoramic form.

These visual poems were inspired by a dream, and they make tangible the deeply buried grief that has haunted me for years. Set along the quiet and still waters of Coal Creek in Boulder, Colorado, the imagery metaphorically explores the “wintering of the soul” that comes before healing, just as spring fosters new growth and resilience. wendyconstantine.com

Paul Stein

Paul Stein

Dana Stirling

LIES | “and that certain images be formed in the mind… to remain there, resurgent” (Ezra Pound, Canto LXXIV)

Lies explores how we remember and how we will be remembered. The diptychs in this project depict how observation gives way to memory, how intention gives way to intrusion, how truth and fiction merge, and how our experiences gain a new meaning through our reimagining. Like memory, the combinations of images in Lies are open-ended for others to build their own lies.

The parings start from the assumption that photography is a tool for visual thinking, then ask us to think about these questions:

· Memory: While there might be consistency in how images are made, and cohesion in how images are exhibited, how are images linked in memory to summarize and catalogue the arc of a life? What is the difference between the visual truths we immediately experience, and the explanatory lies we subsequently fabricate? Since we are deluged with exponentially more visual images than we could ever shoot personally, how do we mentally curate (retain, retrieve, and reframe) all this visual information in a process that creates both complementary and dissonant dialogues between images?

· Mortality: How will we ourselves – our quotidian lives and the images we create – be appropriated and remembered by others decades from now as part of the long tradition of memento mori art? Anyone regarding vernacular photographs has the somber knowledge that virtually all the people in those photographs are deceased.

· Appropriation: What are the boundaries for “taking” a picture and what does it matter who shoots? Are my visual experiences limited to the camera in front of my eyes and the creation of a new image, or are they equally defined by my appropriation of an existing image from others or myself and the adding to it of new visual meaning?

Lies answers these questions by engaging in the practice of vernacular photography. Rather than seeking what is disturbingly odd in vernacular images, Lies builds on what is profoundly ordinary in them. Lies does not treat vernacular images as insufficiently resonant, and therefore needing to be treated as a canvas for collage or inserting the artist’s identity. Instead, Lies explores the abundant meanings inherent in vernacular images, and the equally implicit meanings outside the frame of these images. Lies gathers images separated by decades of time and hundreds of miles of space, and creates a narrative moment between them in the photo album that constitutes memory. Of course, these vernacular narratives are lies, living outside the intended memorialized moment by these anonymous photographers. Yet it is through such lies, through the extractions and sequencing of experiences through memory, that we create meanings for our lives. paulsteinalibis.com

Andy Richter

Andy Richter

Dana Stirling

Louise B. Moore | My grandmother’s acute mind, clever wit, humility and selflessness are aspects of her being that I hope to embody in my own life. She was dedicated to serving others, with love, in her speech, thoughts and actions.

Between us, the conversation was honest and never forced. There was a tranquil, natural quality about the way time passed when we were together. Her presence grounded me, in a manner that one with many years of experience can. Sometimes we would listen to old-time music on her porch and sip wine in the afternoon sun. In the evenings, we watched Wheel of Fortune or the Twins play baseball on television. We played cards or scrabble, and she typically won. We dined around town, hoping to taste something new. With age, rather than closing down and becoming more rigid, she grew ever more open to life.

She frequently talked about her years as a young woman, of life out on her own for the first time. She told the story of meeting my grandfather at work by offering to share her Popsicle with him. She spoke of the war and separation. And, about the move to St. Paul to begin a new life and family in Minnesota. It was as if these moments happened yesterday, they were crystal clear in her mind.

I would tell her my latest ideas and share my pictures with her. She told me about her recent bridge game with the ladies. I massaged her stiff, tired feet by the fireside. She always drove and made sure I got to the airplane on time. Oftentimes, we simply sat there…in silence, present, together.

Louise moved on recently, as autumn turned to winter…she was in her own home, surrounded by her family and much love. A 93-year life of integrity, independence and vitality, released.
These photographs are my memory, moments in time together. www.andyrichterphoto.com