CHANDLER: Cameras capture city's shift
By Mary Voelz Chandler, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published August 14, 2008 at 7 p.m.
T. John Hughes' Union Station, with views from 1992, 1997, 2002 and 2007.
There comes a moment when a city changes so dramatically that reminders of the past become strange, even difficult to comprehend.
It's not about nostalgia; it's about balancing what was and what is. And who better to explore this territory than a photographer, especially if the work is grounded in an unbiased approach, as an act of documentation perhaps just tinged with respect.
That sums up two new exhibitions where the subject is physical manifestations of ways in which Denver has changed.
At the Art Institute of Colorado, T. John Hughes continues his Cityscape Panorama Project, where every five years he has recorded what's on the city skyline (or lowline) to offer occasionally surprising results. At RedShift Gallery, photographer Kim Allen shows archival shots from 1982 through 1992 in a narrative that is more reflective than sad.
Hughes is an architectural photographer, instructor at the institute and on the faculty of the University of Colorado Graduate School of Architecture and Planning. He began this project in 1992, tracking loss, stability and expansion in about 40 locations.
He then revisited each site in 1997 (the last time I wrote about the series), 2002 and 2007. Viewing this installation, where each site is represented by four panoramic color shots stacked atop each other, I felt the unease of someone who thinks she knows this city but apparently has forgotten things along the way.
Sometimes, the change happens early in Hughes' investigation. The view in History Museum stuns: I spent countless hours in the old Burnham Hoyt building (this was pre-Internet, so research meant books and periodicals), but the 1992 image now seems foreign, as if the Michael Graves building has always been there.
In other instances, the development is more fresh. Anyone who visits the Central Platte Valley knows it's a work in progress; Hughes' Union Station images are a revelation, showing a place that's turned from dump to neighborhood in a few years.
In the RedShift exhibition, change is not presented as a before-and- after proposition, but as reminders.
Allen, born in 1955 in Denver, has chosen subjects both evocative and surprising. But this is not about the big-sigh moment; it's more about revelation and remembrance in black and white.
The old Auraria Railyards shown in 1985 gave way to Elitch Gardens and the Pepsi Center. The Monarch Mills building in 1992 is now MCA/Denver. The once bombed-out Flour Mill of 1988 is now upscale lofts and parent of a not-so-proud successor. Allen shot the implosion of the Fireman's Grain Elevator in 1992 at 20th and Blake streets; think Coors Field. Consider the man on the left in another photo, standing outside a brewpub in the making in 1988; talk about change for a geologist turned politico.
There is no fakery here, no inference that what was then is better than what is now. A viewer must bring the emotion to the table. (Confession: I miss those rickety - OK, dangerous - viaducts, so the 1993 image of the one on 16th Street seems particularly powerful.)
As Denver prepares to turn 150, and considers its good and bad times, both exhibitions can be seen in two lights: obviously educational, but also cautionary. The future is important, but the past holds the key.
Denver in flux
* What: Cityscape Panorama Project, photography over time by T. John Hughes, through Sept. 3; Art Institute of Colorado, 1200 Lincoln; 303-837-0825, artinstitute. edu/denver
* What: Architectural Documentation of Denver on Film: 1982-1990s, historic photographs by Kim Allen, through Sept. 13; RedShift Gallery, 2266 Broadway; 303-293-2991, redshift framing.qwestoffice.net
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