Shadows Gather Captures the Renegade Moments, Faces and T&A of Denver's Underground

"The camera is a way to introduce myself," says Shadows Gather. And if the nightclub photographer runs up to take your photo, you should know to greet her with a really, really badass pose.

The artist, who goes by Shadow, has become a distinguished denizen of Denver's underground since she moved here in 2000. "I've always been in the club scene since before I was allowed to be in the club scene," she notes. "I wasn't of age whenever I started to go to the nightclubs, but that's a completely different story."

Her photography story began in 2019, when she started taking photos while clubbing with her Fuji Instax Neo Classic and Evo, snapping shots of people and moments that reflected her own punk proclivities and rebellious roots.

"I went out one night and brought my camera with me, and I had a lot of film. I took a lot of pictures, and whenever I got home, I was so drunk," Shadow recalls with a laugh. "I went to my bathtub and leaned over it and opened up my purse and laid out all of these photos I had taken from that night — just some people that I had met, people who I thought looked cool, and they're all Instax photos."

She began posting the photos on Instagram under the handle @shadows.gather ("It was just the name that was available," she explains), and within a week, she had 1,000 followers.
Today Shadow boasts a following of nearly 10K, and it's easy to see why she's become so popular. Her work is reminiscent of that of Nan Goldin, the contumacious photographer who documented New York City's queer subcultures beginning in the ’70s. Both artists' photographs depend not just on the daring aesthetic quality of the subject matter, but on the photographers' deliberate ability to home in on intimacy. Like Goldin, Shadow is drawn to expressive and artful subcultures, capturing the faces (and T&A) of Denver's queer and punk nightlife scenes, where she finds herself most comfortable.

"Those communities, they're authentic. They're themselves. They're absolutely the most fashionable. They are super fun, delightful, and they're happy to be out with their friends and being happy to be out and being their true selves," she says. After taking their photo, she always gives her subjects a duplicate of the Instax.

"You're capturing somebody's best part of their week, where they can truly be themselves," Shadow continues. "These people that you see in the club, they might have been working an office job Monday through Friday, and they might have been planning their night out all week, and then it's that moment where they can actually go out and be themselves. They can wear whatever they want to wear, they can talk however they want to talk — that's them in their best moment, when they're with their friends. That's a moment that they've been looking forward to. So to have a camera and be able to capture people at their best? Yeah, it's something that I really love."
With their raw authenticity, Shadow's photographs have a life-affirming element that immerses viewers in the scene: You can smell the cigarette smoke, leather and sweat; you can hear pulsating club beats and muffled chatter. It's a quality that's brought her many fans, especially during the peak of the pandemic. Shadow remembers receiving messages from people who would scroll through her photos, just to see faces and feel a sense of community while the lockdown was in full force.

"I find these photos so wholesome; there's a sense of humanity behind these people," Shadow reflects. "They may have pretty crazy makeup and they might look really scary, but whenever they get in front of my lens, they soften up."

Not everyone finds her work wholesome, though. Shadow laments that many of her photos are reported or flagged on social media for their content, even when it isn't explicit. So she's putting all those works on display with her Month of Photography exhibition at Leon Gallery: Shadow Banned, opening March 11. Her censored collection isn't all that will be on view; Shadow estimates that she has more than 1,000 photographs ready to hang on the walls, as well as enlarged images of her most popular work.

The censored photos are up close and personal, bringing viewers face-to-face with the subjects. While it's hard to understand why some of these were flagged, Shadow has a theory.
"I think I'm always walking on eggshells whenever it comes to posting things on Instagram. I see other bodies who are able to get away with things that maybe me or my friends aren't able to," she says. "For instance, I had an image with a beautiful big woman with big breasts, and they had pasties on; nothing was showing, but that got flagged and ultimately got me in trouble. But if that was somebody else, an influencer type with a 'perfect' body, we wouldn't be having that same conversation. And I see that time and time again, whether I found somebody who's trans or in the queer space, or things that are a little bit too edgy.

"I think if you were to look at the show, you might look at these images and think, 'Wow, these aren't that bad,'" Shadow continues. "But that's the problem: They aren't that bad, but they're still getting flagged. ... The most ridiculous one that I have is this woman with her fingers in her mouth. And it's a close-up shot of just her nose, her mouth and her fingers in it. She's heavily tattooed. Beautiful photo, but that got flagged. And it's like, those are just fingers, why did this get removed? And so there are questions of why, who and when. And that's the conversation that I'm having on a regular basis now that I have this show. A lot of people out there feel the same way. That's where the show came from."

With some photos, it's no surprise that they were censored, she admits. These are less face-to-face and more face-to-boobs, face-to-ass, face-to-bulge and so on...and they are delightful to look at. The enigmatic, edgy images in Shadow Banned include a face-painted goth sniffing poppers, the back side of three men in bondage gear cupping each others' behinds, a person poised to take a bump of blow from the edge of a knife, and a close-up of a briefs-sheathed bulge, with cash tucked in the underwear's band. Shadow casts a wide net for her subjects; a typical night out involves multiple clubs, though she has her "sandbox" spots where she returns if she's not vibing with any newer locale. Some of her favorite places include the Crypt, the "leather daddy pup nights" at Denver Sweet, the hi-dive, Sputnik and the volunteer-run, DIY space Seventh Circle. "It's a mixture of different scenes and different personalities," Shadow explains. "I can't say that I only go to queer clubs or I only go to punk clubs. I learned more about myself and more about others by going to new places. ... I like to jump around to different scenes. If I do a drag show one Friday, the next Friday I may go to try to find the punks."

In a way, photography is Shadow's own form of anthropological exploration, keeping her current with the looks, sounds and views of different scenes with which she's familiar, as well as scenes she's never been involved with. While she started out and still is inspired by New York City's infamous Club Kids of the late ’80s and ’90s —  and she goes out to L.A. to party with none other than original Club Kid Ernie Omega — she likes to switch things up. "If I hear of musical interests, like trap music, where I'm like, 'Oh, I don't know what they look like,' or, 'Do emo kids still wear nose rings or lip rings?,' then I have to go and find out. Otherwise, it would get stagnant for me, because I want to meet and see other people," she says. "I'm really everywhere, and I only go to places that I have an interest in going to, because that's what's fun. The venues don't pay me to be there; I'm just going out and taking photos. I find this fun, and so I might as well go out and explore on my own and see what I can find. Variety is the spice of life."

Even though she's been hitting the clubs in Denver for close to two dozen years, she hasn't seen a lot of big changes — except that shows are much more expensive these days. But like fashion, the various club scenes trend in cycles.
"People think that things have changed a lot over the years, but that's just their perspective because they're no longer in the scene," she says. "The punk scene is still there; you just have to be able to go and find that, you know? The club kids are still there. The only thing that changes is it's a different group of people. ... It might be harder to find once you get out of the groove of going to clubs and you don't know where to go. You might think that that scene has disappeared, but things just kind of circle back around."

While not much surprises the jaded photographer, Shadow still has the ability to revel in new faces and interesting people. In Denver, she found a sense of community with those who feel most comfortable after the sun sets, and she also found her own creative niche. Her upcoming show at Leon is just her second gallery exhibition.

"Lately I've been wondering: Is the show too much? Or is it too risky? Or is it not risky enough? I only take photos at nightclubs. I don't have a studio; I don't take them anywhere else. ... So I'm not going to have a vagina in a photo, and people may come to this show and think it's tame. But it's not necessary to get the point across by showing nudity or sex acts," Shadow says. "What's really important is the fact that these are really, really beautiful images, but unfortunately, I don't have the platform to show them. And so this show is the platform for showing them. This is my story."

Shadow Banned is on view at Leon Gallery, 1112 East 17th Avenue, from Saturday, March 11, through April 22.