Y/OUR Denver offers a striking, stay-at-home tour of city’s best buildings

The “Y/OUR Denver” photo gallery comes at just the right moment in 2021, as many of us are, once again, spending excess time indoors, recovering from – or hiding from – the latest form of the coronavirus.

The annual parade has been an online-only event since it began four years ago, before the rise of digital art attractions that flooded during the pandemic. Home entertainment before home entertainment was the thing it should be.

As I’d like to point out, this show has learned how to do digital right, understanding that people sit down to watch shows with different levels of interest: some want to stay and learn, others want to go fast and click on something else. This offer is for everyone.

The images in “Y/OUR Denver” come from an open call to action submitted by two of Denver’s core cultural institutions, the Colorado Center for the Graphic Arts and the Denver Architecture Foundation. The premise is simple: submit your best photos of buildings and the most interesting ones will be selected for display. The competition is open to everyone – professionals, amateurs or people who just happen to be lucky enough to capture a spectacle of urbanization at just the right moment.

This year’s show includes many of those magical moments, and they do what “Y/OUR Denver” does best: give us a new way to appreciate the things we take for granted.

That is certainly the case with the winning shot, a wide view of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, taken by local architect Alan Ford. Ford took over the City Park building at dusk, a time of day when fewer people encounter the family-friendly museum, which does its biggest business during the day.

Ford took his shot from the west, from within the park, and into a part of the huge green space that not many people would venture into after sunset.

The result is a view of the building that shows off its best architectural assets, a multi-level glass-walled atrium filled with expressive design elements. The photo reminds us that this demure formal structure also has a unique and lively side to its personality.

All 30 photos in “Y/OUR Denver” attempt similar transformations.

Balconize’s “Balconize” for Best Outside Film by Joshua Palmieri uses some digital tricks to create a mirror view of Capitol Hill that amplifies its intriguing and overlooked geometry. Suddenly the simple building seems worthy of attention.

“Best Detail” winner, “Turntable Studios” by Risa Friedman invites us to take an up-close look at a distinctive high-rise apartment building that most of us catch from a distance while driving at high speed on Interstate 25. Freidman harvests her image so that it focuses on only a few floors, making Highlights the shades and symmetry of the structure and its colorful interior.

As with most years, the 2021 edition of this fair appeals to a sense of civic pride and nostalgia for those places that define the city’s landmarks. There’s Alison Harper’s faraway view of the Colorado State Capitol, which features the golden dome at its clearest; Gordon Barron’s illumination on the Casa Bonita tower; Sean Marquant’s face-to-face view of the brown mansion, reduced to black and white and enhancing the hotel’s enduring position on the city skyline.

There is also a chance to learn about some of the recent additions to the area. Carol Mikish provides a photo of the nine-story Prism Building on 17th Street, which was built in 2019 by Davis Partnership Architects. Her shot seems to sum up exactly what its designers wanted us to notice: the irregular shapes embedded in the mirrored facade that give the structure a unique identity while at the same time offering captivating and abstract reflections of the surrounding buildings.

Rodney Mahaffey introduced the city to the Fryer Newman Center, which opened on the grounds of the Denver Botanic Gardens last year. Rather than retracting, like Mikish, his technique is to focus heavily on the curved, crossed I-beams that support the atrium. His photo takes us into the heart of what makes this place such a great addition to Denver. Notably, this building is also designed by the Davis Partnership.

The approach and personal style of large buildings works great in many of the images. Emily Barrett Rodriguez highlights the most interesting aspect of the Gio Ponti Tower designed by the Denver Museum of Art by focusing on a small field of unique outdoor glass tiles.

Brent Anthony Nicholas manages to capture the magic and excitement of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House with a single whimsical photo showing long exposures on the lights installed on the building’s exterior. Kevin Gilson focuses his lens on the Wells Fargo Center’s low-rise parking garage, which may be the best component of one of the city’s most respected skyscrapers.

While the gallery, which was judged by CPAC curator Samantha Johnston, is centered around downtown Denver, there are some shots that take away from its concrete core and upscale design. One of them is “Plastic Grass” by Richard Knight.

Knight’s photo captures the exterior of a hotel office on East Colfax Avenue, a survivor of what he described as the “fading spiral of gentrification” in that part of town. Its “anti-architecture” theme is a mixture of styles, time periods, and materials – none of which are impressive. But his image is remarkable in the way it brings dignity to the place; It’s part of our history, full of purpose, and it bears a kind of cultivated pride.

And that’s exactly why this show turns out so well – it understands the unique relationship between photography and architecture.