Andy Warhol

The Andy Warhol exhibit at the University of Denver's Myhren Gallery is a lot of fun. It is wonderful to see all those Warhol graphics and prints of Campbell Soup cans, Chairman Mao, and all those other iconic images. The theme of the show is Warhol in Colorado, and features photographs of Warhol and photographs Warhol took in Fort Collins, Aspen, and other Colorado locations. Warhol was a great pop artist, and I love his work, but I was less than impressed with his photographs. The exhibit is a great record of Warhol's time in Colorado - I personally never knew he even set foot in the state - but the photographs he took - and the photographs taken of him - are less than stellar. Still, it is great to see some of his more famous works on exhibit at the University of Denver. Chairman Mao has never looked better.

Blaine Harrington

Blaine Harrington is a travel photographer, and has been published in a wide variety of magazines. His images are razor sharp and beautiful. They are stunning in color, and evoke exotic images of days long past. His photographs of camels in front of the Taj Mahal and fishermen at dusk in Indonesia are just wonderful. It does not even detract from the images to hear that he hired the camels and their owners to walk in front of the Taj Mahal to make the image more memorable. The only criticism I have is that all of his images have the same yellow orange color. They are beautiful, but it looks to me like Harrington has discovered an image that works, and is sticking to it. In his slide shows, the photographs are much more natural, so it appears that when he has an exhibit, he sticks with what works - stunning but very similar images.

Robert Benjamin

Robert Benjamin's exhibit at the Denver Art Museum is a collection of mostly family photographs, "quiet" photographs as Benjamin likes to put it. These are photographs of his wife, his children, of store windows that catch his fancy. Are these photographs truly art? I guess that question opens up a can of worms. What is art? What is photography? In my mind, photography is a record of the past, instant nostalgia, a treasured collections of memories. Benjamin's photographs of his wife in a scuba mask, photographs of his young children growing up under his lens, are truly wonderful. Benjamin's point is that photographs do not have to be cutting edge, trendy, pushing the edge of the envelope. They can simply record a quiet, beautiful family life. I think his photographs are great.