Twenty Must-See Month of Photography Shows

Finding your way through Month of Photography's dozens of exhibitions — some of which launched in January and others yet to come — can be daunting. Perhaps you’ve made your way through Westword’s list of MoP 2019’s Twelve Not-to-Miss Shows. So what about the rest? Here’s our road map to exhibitions both new and in progress:

Super/impositions
NEST gallery space, 1085 18th Street, University of Colorado Boulder
Open Tuesdays and Wednesdays only, 1 to 3 p.m., through April 12
Some artworks make outside-of-the-box statements, but for Super/impositions, curated by Boulder photographer j. gluckstern, it’s all about pictures created inside the box, or as the call-for-entry rules stated: in-camera only, using multiple-exposure photographic techniques. It’s a small show — only the size of a video screen on which the exhibited images flash — with limited viewing hours, but it’s also a gripping show, full of visual surprises. See what kind of alchemy photographers can capture without the advantage of digital technology or a darkroom.

Settlers
Art Gym Denver, 1460 Leyden Street
Through March 22
For MoP 2019, Art Gym is hosting Settlers, a view of both the promise and the depredation of Manifest Destiny, which ultimately resulted in co-option of the land, culture and freedoms of Native Americans and members of other disenfranchised cultures. Curated by former Colorado Photographic Arts Center director Rupert Jenkins and showcasing the work of seven photography-based artists (Tya Anthony, Sarah Fukami, Sarah Gjertson, Carl Iwasaki, James Milmoe, Heather Oelklaus and Christopher R. Perez), Settlers takes a neutral approach, with stories to tell from both sides of the cultural gap.

Storytelling: Through the Lens
CHAC Art Gallery, 222 Santa Fe Drive
Through March 30
Awards Presentation: Friday, March 15, 6 p.m.
Find another kind of storytelling at CHAC, in a group show also juried by Rupert Jenkins, along with Geoffrey Shamos of the University of Denver’s Vicki Myhren Gallery. A celebration of the narrative powers of photography, Storytelling: Through the Lens is a departure for CHAC, with a widely multicultural look.

Anthony Camera and Andrew Novick, Articular: An Exploration in Lenticular and Stereoscopic Imagery
Vertigo Art Space, 960 Santa Fe Drive
Open Saturdays, March 9 and 16, noon to 3 p.m.
Closing Reception: Saturday, March 23, 1 to 5 p.m.
Frequent Westword cover photographer Anthony Camera and photography hobbyist Andrew Novick play with the lenticular imagery we’d commonly associate with looking through an old-fashioned View-Master toy, which relies on the intermingling of differing information from each eye through a single lens. Is it fun? Given the theme and the purveyors, the answer is yes — a lot.

Roadside Attractions
Access Gallery, 909 Santa Fe Drive
Through April 5
Meet the Artist/Community Respite: Friday, March 22, 5 to 9 p.m.
First Friday Closing Reception: Friday, April 5, 5 to 9 p.m.
The photographers of Roadside Attractions form a constellation around the mission of Access Gallery, which serves young adults on the intellectual/developmentally disabled spectrum through art and life-skills training. Muralist Josiah Lopez represents Access’s teaching staff, and Ted Tahquechi, a legally blind photographer who follows the light to make pictures, represents the I/DD community. The last piece of the puzzle involves snapshots of Wayfaring Band director Andrea Moore taken by the nonprofit’s I/DD members, who learn life skills while traveling as a group.

Spun Sugar: Same as It Never Was
Federal Coffee, 2307 Federal Boulevard
Through March 30
Spun Sugar takes a look at alternative methods used to arrive at imagery that is, as the promo says, “the same but different.” The opening for this invitational juried coffee-house show is over, but you can still catch the exhibition, minus the pink cotton candy, through the end of the month. Have a cup of joe while you’re there.

No Boundaries
Sandra Phillips Gallery, 47 West 11th Avenue
Through April 6
Sandra Phillips tips her hat to MoP with a show that mixes the aerial photography of Evan Anderman — whose recent works offer breathtaking views of bare trees left by the 2018 Spring Creek fire in southern Colorado — with new animations by gallery artists Virginia Folkestad, Anna Kaye and John Morrison.

Wendi Schneider, Evenings With the Moon
Mr. Pool Gallery, 2347 South Street, Boulder
Through May 30
Natural forms, creatures and landscapes caught in moonlight set the after-dark mood for Wendy Schneider’s solo at Mr. Pool. Schneider exercises her painting background and love affair with nature in these lovely works by printing imagery on vellum or handmade kozo papers before overlaying them with gold leaf for a lush gossamer effect.

Lyle Owerko, The Boombox Project
Station 16 Denver, Source Hotel, 3330 Brighton Boulevard, #204
March 8 through April 5
Opening Reception: Friday, March 8, 6 to 9 p.m.
The jet-setting filmmaker and photographer Lyle Owerko, a pop-culture champion with a photo-documentarian’s eye, made his name on a whole gamut of projects and lucky shots, including his viral TIME cover image of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. But his Boombox Project, an ongoing series of vintage boombox portraits immortalized in Spike Lee’s introduction to a 2010 tome published by Abrams Books, might be his best-known accomplishment. See a set in all their glory and shake Owerko’s hand at the opening.

John Boak: Paintings
808 Projects, 808 Santa Fe Drive
Through March 31
Opening Reception: Friday, March 8, 5 to 8 p.m.
Whether rendered in oils or created digitally, John Boak’s finished paintings start with a photographic underlay
that he sometimes reorders with a sophisticated sheen and sense of movement and sometimes accentuates with a hyperreal overlay. Think of his process as another way of manipulating photos, which places it squarely in the open-minded MoP milieu.
Joseph Kolean, Nearer to Thee
JuiceBox Art Space, 3006A Larimer Street
March 8 through April 19
Opening Reception: Friday, March 8, 6 p.m.
Denver-based filmmaker and photographer Joe Kolean juxtaposes his own work with his father’s family snapshots, with no sense of distinction between the divergent imagery each man generates. Like father, like son? Not exactly, but the lesson learned is one about how everything in our lives is connected.

Public Domain
Dateline Gallery, 3004 Larimer Street
Through March 31
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 9, 6 to 11 p.m.
This group show, curated by Estevan Ruiz, is all about the streets of Denver and its places and people, all caught on the lowdown from a personal point of view. Through atmospheric shots of disappearing urban landmarks and ordinary people, Dateline will add a little grit to your Month of Photography agenda.

Jeff Davenport, Nights
Leon Gallery, 1112 East 17th Avenue
March 9 through April 20
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 9, 7 to 11 p.m.
Los Angeleno Jeff Davenport photographs cityscapes, neighborhoods and portraits both in daylight and in unlit darkness in his practice, but he sticks to the latter for Nights, an after-dark poem to the magic of moonlight and city glow.

Isa Marcelli and Léa L’Azou, Close to Home
Processus, the Institute for Art and Life, 955 24th Street
March 9 through May 24
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 9, 7 to 11 p.m
Processus partner Christopher R. Perez curated this smart show of work by the French mother-daughter team of Isa Marcelli and Léa L’Azou, aka Les Photographeuses, whom Perez visited in their shared studio. The women work mainly in black and white, using such analog processes as silver printing, cyanotype, pinhole and wet plate to capture haunting portraits and dreamlike imagery.

Deconstruction
Studio Altieri, One Galapago Street
March 14 through April 14
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 14, 6 to 9 p.m.
The gallery at Studio Altieri debuts with a group exhibition celebrating alternative-photography methods both experimental and classic to deconstruct imagery for out-of-this-world results. And you can get a hands-on taste of some of those processes — chemigram, paper negatives and cyanotype — in a series of $40 workshops at the gallery on March 16 and 31 and April 7; visit Studio Altieri’s Facebook page for details and registration.

Kellye Eisworth and Forrest Lotterhos, Subject & Surface
Seidel City, 3205 Longhorn Road, Boulder
March 15 through May 2
Opening Reception: Friday, March 15, 6 to 9 p.m.
Subject & Surface showcases the duo of Kellye Eisworth and Forrest Lotterhos, who go their separate ways in unflinching explorations of altered and transgender bodies. Kellye Eisworth photographs female-appearing subjects marked by scars, tattoos and body modifications, while Lotterhos’s film phoria delves into the complex trans experience. Together, they force you to look even when it’s difficult, which is the whole point.

Edible
Downtown Aurora Visual Arts (DAVA), 1405 Florence Street, Aurora
March 21 through June 7, 2019
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 21, 4 to 7 p.m.
At DAVA, which teaches young students of all ages to navigate life and make better choices through art and job-skills training, the latest crop has been working feverishly on multi-disciplinary projects focusing on nutrition. Some of those pods involved growing food, others encouraged healthy living through dance, but the elementary-school-aged children in DAVA’s Open Studio were trained in film photography to create a series of portraits and food imagery, and that’s the tie-in to MoP 2019. See what kids can do behind the lens and what DAVA can do with a roomful of kids.

Larry Laszlo, Stars in a Flash: Quick-Capture Portraiture
Sie FilmCenter Gallery, 2510 East Colfax Avenue
March 21 through April 18
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 21, 5 to 7:30 p.m.
Larry Laszlo has never been the face of the Denver Film Festival, because his face has always been hidden behind a camera, shooting red-carpet celebrities and film-world nightlife since the fest’s inception in 1978. It’s one gig for Laszlo in a multitude for the professional, but it’s also a documentation of a glitzy piece of Denver’s cultural history and a great resource for stargazers everywhere. In Laszlo’s life, everyone’s in showbiz. Go gawk.

Mikayla Whitmore, Magic Circle
David B. Smith Gallery, 1543 A Wazee Street
March 29 through May 4
Opening Reception: Friday, March 29, 6 to 8 p.m.
Las Vegas photographer Mikayla Whitmore takes over the project room at David B. Smith Gallery in deference to MoP, with a series of desert landscapes broken by strategically placed mirrors and other surreal photographic moments.

This Is Not a Photo
Curtis Center for the Arts, 2349 East Orchard Road, Greenwood Village
April 6 through May 4
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 6, 6 to 8 p.m.
This Is Not a Photo plays off the surrealist message of Magritte’s painting “The Treachery of Images” (aka “Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe”) by challenging the notion of what is and what isn’t a photograph. Examples range from Daisy Patton’s blown-up found images overpainted with color and floral details to Maeve Eichelberger’s three-dimensional photo-collages. Expand your horizons.

See a full schedule of MoP exhibitions and events online.