David Sharpe

Colorado artist David Sharpe investigates the Western terrain using the technique of pinhole photography. Addressing each subject through an esoteric lens, Sharpe exhibits works from three landscapes sites: the expansive plains east of Denver, the compelling Spiral Jetty landform in Utah, and the dramatic shorelines of Mendocino, California. By utilizing photographic paper instead of film in his handmade oatmeal box or tea-can constructed cameras, the artist records natural elements through the lens curvature. The resulting large-scale images create a rhythm and movement both meditative and insightful while resonating in the poetic. As Lisbeth Neergaard Kohloff writes, "Viewing these images, one yearns to walk into the scene; to become part of the moment; to contemplate the world and the self in all their imperfection. Pinhole imagery, with its often blurred, unpredictable and rudimentary results, is supremely well suited for this vision. The curvature of Sharpe's cameras creates a rhythm and movement as one wanders though each scene and his use of selective retouching of the print leaves the flaws inherent to the technique, and of nature, visible."