Only in the most obscure way are the main exhibits now on display at Blue Sky Gallery related to each other. Their paths cross in areas dealing with transience, the Southwest and the way we view landscapes and the people in it.
German photographer Eric Klemm’s exhibit is a collection of portrait photographs he took while traveling in North America, photo-documenting indigenous peoples along the way.
In Allen Bryan’s exhibit, he attempts to capture not people, but landscapes in order to recreate the panoramic eyesight he once had.
Klemm got his start as a professional photographer in 1968. He’s gone on to win photography awards around the globe, including the PX3 Culture award in Paris for his most current installation, Silent Warriors. The collection attempts to compare and document Native Americans in modern society.
From a broad spectrum of geographical origins and native tribes and cultures, Klemm has compiled the faces of hundreds of people whose ancestral origins stem from the very ground we call our home.
Now living in British Columbia, Klemm’s photos are mainly of northern North American tribes in Canada and Alaska. In a handful of images, however, southwestern natives adorn their bodies with the authentic outfits and makeup of their native cultures.
The stereotypical native is not the only type of person captured. Klemm photographed people with native roots that he found living on the street, shopping in a grocery store or pumping gas—breaking the barriers of what we think of indigenous people and showing that these cultures still exist today.
Comforts of Home is Bryan’s way of taking back something that he lost in 1988—his perfect eyesight. Upon hearing that his ability to see at night, experience color and view panoramic landscapes would slowly end, he headed down to the Southwest to experience vastness once more.
His images incorporate his actual vision of the world through blurred colors and fading figures as well as his imaged vision through the use of panoramic photographs and staged sets, which have more activity than the typical scene. A bed or a set kitchen table grace most of the photos, placed in odd locations like a parking garage or an office building. Seeing the world through Bryan’s lens is a trap door into his literal reality and perspective of the world.
Paying tribute to a recently passed artist whose work once appeared on the walls of Blue Sky, the gallery has resurfaced a small collection of privately owned underwater photographs from Larry Sultan. The images are part of Sultan’s 1981 Blue Sky exhibit Swimming Lessons in which he waited underwater until the perfect moment to capture the happenings just below the surface.
Floating babies and swimming mothers fill the images, revealing the rippling and murky world of a water dweller. Sultan is known for publishing many books of photographs including The Valley, which recreates the lustful and glamorous lifestyles of southern California.
While unconnected, Blue Sky’s gallery is teeming with masterpieces from artists with a unique eye and vision of the world—all with the mission of getting the audience to see life from a different vantage point.