Art Beat

Interpretive Visions, at the Camera Obscura Gallery, is a solo exhibit featuring black-and-white photos by Loretta Young-Gautier. The show includes older photos dating back to the 1980s, as well as a batch of new ones.

Young-Gautier studied with local black-and-white masters Ron Wohlauer and Ray Whiting. Like them, she has her entire shot in focus, but unlike them, she uses dream imagery instead of straightforward views of exterior reality. She creates these surrealistic photo-montages in the darkroom, and her final prints are a combination of two, three, or even more negatives placed one on top of the other. In some, daytime landscapes are at the bottom and night’s darkness at the top. In one, there are three moons in the sky. Horses are one of her favorite topics, as are the villages and buildings of Northern New Mexico. Although she didn’t study with the late Herbert Bayer, Young-Gautier was apparently inspired by the Aspen genius, as evidenced by her juxtaposition of images. Hotel Arizona: (above), in which doors have been installed in the side of a cactus, pays particular homage to Bayer.

The show was organized by Camera Obscura director Hal Gould. It closes on November 12.