Vintage B&W photos help teach prospective photographers at CMC
By Mike McKibbin
ASPEN – Photos taken by some of the most well-known and admired past and current photographers will be on exhibit at Colorado Mountain College’s Aspen Campus for the next several months.
George and Patti Stranahan of Carbondale recently donated 80 of their personal, vintage black-and-white photographs to Colorado Mountain College. The collection took the Stranahans about 30 years to gather, with the lowest-priced photo valued at around $400, the most expensive probably at about $4,000, George Stranahan said.
The Stranahans share a long-time interest in the arts, philanthropy and education. That latter interest was why the couple gave the photos to CMC – so the images would help to teach future photographers instead of remaining sealed inside a private museum.
The Stranahans asked that this permanent gift be used to strengthen the college’s educational mission, and that it be widely available to Colorado Mountain College students and the various communities in CMC’s 12,000-square-mile service area.
The Stranahan collection will be displayed in the gallery at CMC-Aspen, 255 Sage Way, from Nov. 5 through Feb. 22, with a public opening reception Thursday, Nov. 5, 6-8 p.m.
Most of the collection was previously on exhibit at the CMC Center for Excellence in the Arts Gallery in Glenwood Springs, where last month George Stranahan, an accomplished photographer himself, talked to 16 students in CMC photography instructor Steve Smith’s Color I class.
Photo students learn from extraordinary collection
Stranahan told students in the class that American photographer and filmmaker Paul Strand, who helped to establish photography as an art form in the 20th century, is his “hero” among the photographers in the collection.
“Most of these,” he said as he gestured around the gallery, “have very simple structure. I think Paul Strand is too beautiful to be good, but it is good.”
Among the photographers represented in the collection are Ansel Adams, Margaret Bourke-White, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Edward Weston.
Stranahan called Weston and Adams “classics.”
“One of the best ways, if you want to imitate some of the classics,” he told the students, “is to use slow film and set up a tripod. You can kind of get a sense that it took some of these photographers around 40 minutes to just set up for a shot.”
Stranahan said photography has come far – from the 19th century, when a horse-drawn covered wagon would haul a camera and other equipment to where a photo was taken, to today, with small, fast digital cameras and cameras in cell phones. Film speeds were “incredibly slow” back in the day, Stranahan said, and there was no color film until about the 1930s.
But those days produced some great photos and photographers, he said.
“They had to really struggle for their professional dignity,” he explained. “They had to do that, after many rejections for trying to make their photos look like paintings. So, they formed photo clubs to critique their work. That helped, and they began to create real art, something you could also sell.”
Valuing B&W photos, photographers
Stranahan said he admires black-and-white photos more than color because “it adds something by subtracting. It’s already an abstraction because there’s no color, it’s not real.”
He prefers to take photos in black and white, “so I try to take the color out of the shot by squinting my eyes to make it fuzzy and I can pretty well get the shape of things. So then when I look through the camera and snap the shutter, I can usually get a good idea of what the final print will look like.”
Ultimately, Stranahan said, the best photographs are art and the top photographers are artists.
“That’s art as human nature,” he said. “If you’re an artist, shouldn’t your art try to make things better? Shouldn’t it maybe give voice to the voiceless?
“The best photos show us what a human being is all about,” Stranahan said. “Trying to know human nature, what are humans? It’s kind of like the eternal question of ‘Who am I?’ To be able to show what each human being is all about is a powerful reason to be a photographer.”
Visit the Stranahan Photo Collection Exhibit
What: Stranahan Photo Collection Exhibit
Where: Colorado Mountain College Aspen Campus, 255 Sage Way
When: Thursday, Nov. 5-Monday, Feb. 22; Opening reception, Nov. 5, 6-8 p.m., Art Gallery, Room 126
Gallery Hours: Monday-Thursday, 8 a.m.-9:30 p.m.; Friday 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Times vary due to class schedules; please call the campus at 925-7740 to ensure the gallery is open.
Info: 947-8367, Alice Beauchamp