Photography Collection

By David Frey
George Stranahan is an accomplished photographer in his own right, but his photography collection, which used to hang on the walls of his Woody Creek home, included images of some of the 20th century’s greatest photographers.Now the collection is Colorado Mountain College’s collection. Stranahan and his wife Patti handed over an extraordinary gift of 80 black-and-white photographs they collected over a lifetime. Among the photographers whose work is represented are Ansel Adams, famous for his iconic Western landscapes; Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose street photos captured what he termed the “decisive moment;” Depression-era documentarian Walker Evans; trailblazing female photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White and Robert Maplethorpe, whose images of flowers captured a subtle eroticism before he turned his lens to more controversial subjects. The photographs are rotating in a pair of exhibits traveling throughout CMC’s campuses. Next week, the larger of the exhibits is unveiled at the Aspen campus. A public reception is set for Nov. 5, from 6-8 p.m.
“It’s like someone taking their passion and saying, ‘Here’s my passion. I’m going to give it to you,’” said Alice Beauchamp, director of CMC’s Center for Excellence in the Arts and curator of the exhibit. The Stranahans asked that their permanent gift be used to strengthen the college’s educational mission, and that it be available to Colorado Mountain College students throughout CMC’s massive 12,000-square-mile region. They want the images to help to teach future photographers instead of remaining sealed inside a private museum. When they first announced their intention to donate the photos, Beauchamp went to their home to see them with longtime CMC photography instructor Buck Mills. The images were packed away in boxes. Unwrapping them was like unwrapping buried treasure, with photos valued from $400 to $4,000. Mills “was like a little kid in a candy store,” Beauchamp said. In front of them were images by some of photography’s greatest luminaries, like Sally Mann and Paul Strand. The photos were first displayed at the CMC gallery inside the college’s district office in Glenwood Springs. But the 80 photographs are too overwhelming for one site at CMC, so a second exhibit began at the Breckenridge campus. The two exhibits will circulate among the campuses for the next couple years, Beauchamp said, and then may make a bigger road trip to college campuses across the country. “I’m speechless when I think about it,” she said. “It was a huge personal gift from George and Patti.” The themes of these black-and-white images vary greatly, but they share one thing in common: They capture a moment in time — a glance to the camera, a glance away, a shaft of light. In one Cartier-Bresson image, a bicycle blurs down a winding French alleyway an instant before disappearing. In another, a girl is about to be swallowed in a whitewashed labyrinth of Greek stairways and doorways. The exhibit includes portraits of actress Marilyn Monroe and artist Frida Kahlo, and of Latin American peasants and a Haitian man who appears to be in the thralls of a voodoo trance. In one, poor Russian schoolchildren sit in class. A Depression-era woman bakes biscuits in another. A New Orleans sex worker reclines. A boy scrambles over a fence. A Mississippi couple dances the jitterbug. One of its most crowd-pleasing images is Steven Brock’s “Salud Compadre, Peru.” A trio of apparently pickled Peruvian peasants sit alongside a pockmarked wall. They wear rumpled hats and dirty clothes. One holds a walking stick. One holds a tiny cup. The third raises his fist in a toast of “Salud!”More than one visitor has left the gallery raising their fist and shouting “Salud!” Beauchamp said.