My solo photography show rangefound will open Saturday January 10 from 7–10 pm at Neopolitan Gallery in Denver, Colorado (3107 E. Colfax Avenue). Appropriately, the National Western Stock Show, Rodeo and Horse Show opens earlier that day. Put on your boots and come on by, ya hear!

This show originates from a day at the Quarter Circle Bell Ranch for their semi-annual cattle branding in spring 2008. A number of folks were on hand to volunteer their time getting these calves ready for sale. This time it was just branding, then it was back to the pasture with their mothers. No castrations: the young bulls got to keep their balls, and I was spared the ritual of Rocky Mountain Oysters for lunch.

The eye-opener for me was the collection of people busting their butts in the corral: this was not a day job for them. Their regular careers included software sales engineer, navy intelligence officer, and tax accountant (to name a few). Some brought their kids to teach and pass on the traditions of ranch life. And some, like me, came just to watch. 

In retrospect, I realized that city slickers and cowboy-obsessed Germans aren’t the only ones who dream of some pastoral idyll. We can see from this past election year, with its vague ideals of “small-town America,” and from the larger oeuvre of country-western music that cowboys also idealize the cowboy way. 

The name “rangefound” combines two ideas: something found “on the range,” and something “post-rangefinder” … as in digital cameras. For these 15 vignettes of a day on the ranch, I chose technicolor palettes that you might find in the pages of an old Life Magazine or painted on a building somewhere down on Main Street. These images could be used to sell cigarettes, pancake batter, or jeans just as much as they could sell the cowboy lifestyle itself. To provide a hint of texture, I printed the show on gallery-wrapped canvas.

Finally, I considered the context of these photos’ debut: Colfax Avenue’s Neopolitan Gallery. In both senses of the word, Colfax Avenue “cleaves” Denver—cleaves urban & rural, cleaves future & past, cleaves actual & ideal—and rangefound is my reflection of that.