For most of its modern history, the Denver Art Museum’s acquisition of photography was hit or miss — one department pursuing works in the medium with little or no coordination with another.
The result was a mishmash that when brought together nonetheless added up to a respectable 7,000 images, with both commendable strengths and notable weaknesses.
In 2008, then-director Lewis Sharp decided to unify and bolster the museum’s approach to photography, establishing a department devoted to the medium and hiring Eric Paddock as its first full-time photography curator.
After spending nearly two years consolidating and researching the museum’s once-scattered holdings, Paddock, former curator of photography and film at the Colorado Historical Society, is finally giving the public its first look at the fruits of his efforts.
The museum is inaugurating its first dedicated photography gallery this weekend with the unveiling of a wide cross-section of 58 images from its little-known permanent collection.
To amplify excitement about the opening, the museum is treating it like an attention-grabbing temporary exhibition complete with a marketing-oriented title, “Exposure: Photos From the Vault.”
Giving substance to those words, Paddock estimates that at least half of the photographs in the new gallery have never been shown before.
Selections range from virtually unknown images to familiar masterpieces, such as Ansel Adams’ transcendent night scene, “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico” (1944) and Harold Edgarton’s famous stop-action shot, “Milk Drop Coronet” (1957).
Other widely known photographers represented include Diane Arbus, Robert Doisneau, Laura Gilpin, Andre Kertesz, Eadweard Muybridge, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston and Garry Winogrand.
Paddock sought to highlight the “best, most interesting” images in the collection, while ensuring a balance of iconic and what he called “quizzical, curious” images. He succeeds on all fronts.
“We’re addressing these things to the general public as well as to well-informed photography enthusiasts,” he said, “so I believe in mixing the two kinds of work together.
“And the iconic pictures — they are iconic for a reason. And just because we see them a lot, just because they’re maybe even over-familiar, doesn’t mean that they don’t still possess some of the magic that made them iconic in the first place.”
The oldest piece on view dates to around 1867 — Carleton Eugene Watkins’ albumen print, “Castle Rock.” It is one of six works from the Daniel Wolf Landscape Photography Collection, which came to the museum in 1991.
The largest sub-group within the museum’s photography holding, it encompasses about 1,250 images by such noted 19th-century photographers as George Barker, William Henry Jackson and Timothy O’Sullivan.
The newest photo was created in 2009 — Denver-based Kevin O’Connell’s “Untitled (CE-901),” part of a series of views of Western energy-producing buildings and equipment that were exhibited last year at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and Robischon Gallery.
Links to Colorado
Paddock has put an accent on works by photographers with Colorado connections, including some who are known in local photography circles but don’t necessarily have a broad public following.
These include Robert Benjamin, Wesley Kennedy, Owen O’Meara, Ruth Thorne- Thorsen, John Ward, Ronald Wohlauer and George Woodman.
The photography gallery is on the seventh floor of the museum’s original building in a central, 1,692-square-foot space that once housed small, rotating exhibitions and more recently was used for storage.
Paddock has chosen an unusual bluish-gray color for the walls. The choice manages to complement both the predominantly black-and-white images and the color ones — no easy feat.
Around the bottom of the walls, he has added a series of quotations which provide a thought-provoking touch to the display without distracting from the photographs.
Because the exhibition is too small to offer any kind of comprehensive historical overview (and the collection is too spotty to do that anyway), Paddock has smartly organized it into a series of loose, unlabeled thematic sections.
One is devoted to city scenes, another to nudes and still another to images made using non-traditional methods, such as 1973 photogravure by Van Deren Coke, a prominent Santa Fe photographer who died in 2004.
It is essentially a photograph of a photograph of his grandfather, with Coke using an ambrotype, a kind of glass photograph, as a negative. Because much of the black lacquer of the original image has flaked away, what is left is a kind of ghostly silhouette, an ode to an irretrievable past.
The thematic divisions are not meant to make a statement of any kind. They are just subtle organizational tools that can be helpful in taking in the show, but the experience of viewers who ignore or do not pick up them will not be in any way lessened.
Further enhancing the display are some of Paddock’s clever pairings, such as his juxtaposition of two images by Ansel Adams and Robert Adams, contrasting the differing philosophies of these two great (unrelated) landscape photographers.
“Exposure: Photos from the Vault” is no blockbuster, but the modest yet high-caliber display offers a welcome glimpse at the museum’s little-known collection, with enough surprises and standbys to please connoisseurs and casual visitors alike.
This debut group of images is expected to remain on view through November, when it will be replaced with a completely different rotation from the collection.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“EXPOSURE: PHOTOS FROM THE VAULT.
Photography. Denver Art Museum, West 13th Avenue between Broadway and Bannock Street. The museum inaugurates its first permanent photography gallery with a diverse exhibition of 58 images from its 7,000-piece permanent collection. Tentatively through November. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Free with regular admission. 720-865-5000 or
