Earlier this month, the Denver Art Museum held the Let's Go Colorado! photography contest. Participants were instructed to follow in the footsteps of photographers Timothy H. O'Sullivan and William H. Bell, whose work is currently on view in On Desert Time: Landscape Photographs by O’Sullivan & Bell, 1871-1874, and capture an image that reflects both the bones of the Colorado landscape and their own discoveries in the area.
Check out our Facebook page to see the top 30 winning submissions, which will be on view at Untitled: Stop Motion on September 30. The Denver Art Museum is proud to partner with Your 6 Hometown Toyota Stores to provide opportunities for aspiring artists to showcase their work at the museum through this unique contest.
At top is the overall winner, Ida Inspiration by Paola Scharberg. Photography curator Eric Paddock had this to say about it:
"It is easy to believe that the effort of climbing a mountain is enough to make any picture good. Ida Inspiration demonstrates that there is a lot more to it than that. The photographer stepped back from the figure in the foreground to show someone sitting at the edge of a vast and physically complicated landscape. I can’t tell whether that person is drawing, writing in a journal, or just unwrapping a sandwich, but that relaxed pose makes the idea of sitting on a mountain top seem more like a natural occurrence than a moment of triumph—as if that person simply belongs there. I like the way the diagonal ridge drifts off to the right and leads the eye to Longs Peak on the farthest horizon. And I’m excited by the jumble of talus, cliffs and snow in that glaciated bowl at the seated figure’s feet. To me, this entry reflects the spirit of nineteenth-century explorer-photographers like those featured in the DAM’s On Desert Time exhibition."
Below are the top five winning submissions chosen by the Denver Art Museum’s photography department.
Congratulations to all of these amazing photographers!
Top image credit: Ida Inspiration, © Paola Scharberg.