PFA Newsletter
Photography in the Fine Arts Quarterly
Vol 28 No.1 February 2011-FINAL EDITION

Compositions: 21st C Abstract Expressions
Paintings by Mollie Uhl Eaton

February 18 - March 19, 2011

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The Camera Obscura Gallery will be closing its doors at the end of April, 2011. The following is a schedule of our concluding events:

March 4-March 19:
We will hold a silent auction of selected works from the gallery collection in the upstairs galleries; in conjunction, paintings by Mollie Uhl Eaton will be on display in the downstairs galleries. Bids for the auction will close at 4:30 PM on March 19th. After March 4, you can go to the "auction" link on our website home page for a list of pieces included, registration details and updates.
Please join us for a special First Friday launch of the Auction on March 4 from 5 to 9PM

March 25-April 30:
Two retrospective exhibitions:
Hal D. Gould in Gallery 1 and the upstairs galleries, and Loretta Young-Gautier in Gallery 2. A reception for the artists will be held on Friday, March 25th from 5:30 to 8:30 PM.
Saturday, April 30
We will host an open house and final farewell to our friends, patrons and volunteers, from 2:30 to 5:30 PM.

Compositions: 21st Century
Abstract Expressions:
Paintings by Mollie Uhl Eaton
(American, born 1956)

The Camera Obscura Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings and photographs by artist Mollie Uhl Eaton as one of its last exhibitions. Educated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Colorado, a Certificate with Creative Merits from New York Institute of Photography, and with active membership in the Denver Art Students League and experimental workshops at La Veta School of the Arts, this 21st Century woman artist has been taught inspirationally by many great Colorado artists such as Peggy Zehring, Quang Ho, Mel Carter, William Corey, Michael Gadlin, Robert Gratiot, David Griffin, Jane Jones, Margaretta Gilboy, John Lencicki, Molly Davis, Theresa Brownback, Tom Stevens, Howard Bond, and Hal Gould. Mollie's paintings show a sophistication of design and seductive awareness of color harmony.

In tune with the great Wassily Kandinsky, Mollie is deeply convinced of the"spiritual in art" and in October 2010 she presented a 40 minute essay to the Denver Fortnightly Club entitled: "Kandinsky at the Guggenheim: A Look at a Creative Artist." Mollie's artistry is incorporated in every aspect of her being here now, as she expresses exuberantly a fine art through painting, writing, photography. Other papers she has presented are "Photography in the Fine Arts: A Peek at the Poets and the Prices" and "Important Women Photographers: Their Vision and Voice." Mollie also worked as staff photographer for Life on Capitol Hill, which published more than 150 of her photographs.
Showing an exciting passion and a colorful obsession with abstract art, Mollie's 3 ½ x 5 foot acrylic paintings exhibit free, dynamic brushwork which exudes rhythm and sound; the musical theme extends into titles such as "Jazz, Salsa, Hip Hop to Belly Dance Romance, Purple Haze and Fantasia".
The panorama of the exhibition consistently vibrates with the power of color and resonates with abstract energy.

To fill the space between Mollie's large format paintings, the exhibition will include "Photography by Hal & Mollie"-a series of fine art photographs created by Hal Gould and Mollie Uhl Eaton over a long collaboration. Photographer Hal Gould first inspired Mollie as a master teacher with his courses, "Photography in the Fine Arts" and "The Aesthetics of Photography."

Final Show at the Gallery

Hal D. Gould, M Photog: Life's Work
And
Loretta Young-Gautier: Retrospective

A selection from the works of Camera Obscura Gallery Owner/Director Hal D. Gould and Associate Director, Loretta Young-Gautier will be offered for viewing and sale at the Gallery. Hal Gould will present work covering over 60 years of portrait, travel, abstract, nudes and landscape photographic art. Loretta Young-Gautier will showcase work illustrating an artistic evolution selected from various bodies of work created over 25 years.

HAL D. GOULD, M. Photog. (American, b. 1920)

For over 50 years, Hal D. Gould has operated a showcase for fine-art photography. In 1963, he co-founded the Colorado Photographic Art Center-one of the first venues devoted exclusively to showing and promoting photography as a medium for fine art. In 1979 he opened The Camera Obscura Gallery and has since built a reputation for exhibiting such stellar masters as Ansel Adams, Edward & Brett Weston, Andre Kertesz, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Imogen Cunningham, Paul Strand, Edward S. Curtis, Sebastiao Salgado, and far too many others to mention.

Not only has Gould been a tireless advocate of photographic art, but also is a master photographer. The same artistry that he promotes in his gallery is evident in his own work. After training at the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1940s as a portrait painter, he was inspired by photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz and Man Ray and embarked on photographic studies at the Institute and at Ray Vogue School of Photography. For 25 years he operated a commercial studio and photographed everything from babies to bank buildings. During this time, he also pursued his personal vision, a vision that reflects a broad diversity of style and technique.

Photographs by Hal D. Gould are part of several corporate and private collections, such as the Denver Art Museum, The Professional Photographers Association of American and the Western History Department of Denver Public Library, among others. His work has been exhibited widely, including the Denver Art Museum, The Center for Fine Art Photography, RedLine, the Byers-Evans House Museum, and recently, Open Shutter Gallery. He has received numerous awards, among which are the prestigious National Award-the Professional Photographers of America's top award, and the Gold Medal Grand Prize in the International Federation of Photographer's Competition in Riga, Lativia. And in 2010, he was awarded with the coveted Bonfils-Stanton Award for Arts and Humanities. He is a certified appraiser of photographs.

Loretta Young-Gautier
(American, b. 1960)

Loretta Young-Gautier is currently Associate Director of the Camera Obscura Gallery. She has worked alongside Hal Gould for the past 18 years as assistant curator, book-buyer and editor of the Photography in the Fine Arts Newsletter. She has also juried numerous exhibitions.

Young-Gautier's work explores the utopian vision of the mind's eye, representing the idyllic and sometimes forbidding world that lies within imagination. Her images are created in camera, computer and the darkroom through multiple exposures, negative sandwiching, combination printing and, more recently, digital techniques.
Loretta has exhibited her work in numerous national group and solo shows, including the Coors Western Art Show at the National Western Stock Show, and the San Diego Natural History Museum. Her photographs are meticulously crafted, sometimes taking weeks to create a single image. She produces a limited edition of no more than 25 archival silver gelatin or pigment inkjet prints.
Photographs by Loretta Young-Gautier are part of nationwide private, corporate and museum collections, including Great West Life, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Western History Department of the Denver Public Library. Her work has been published in Photo Review, Icon, Masterpiece Magazine, The Photographers Market, 303 Magazine and Passion Press. A Colorado native, Loretta currently lives in Indian Hills.

Please join us for a reception for the Artists on Friday, March 25th, from 5:30 to 8:30 PM.

The Camera Obscura
Gallery is Closing

Anyone familiar with the arts scene in Colorado will know the rich experience of walking through the door at 1309 Bannock Street and entering an unpretentious world regaled by the finest photography our planet has to offer. You will know the warm greetings of Hal Gould and Loretta Young-Gautier. You will know the camaraderie that percolates at Gallery openings. You will know the simple yet profound feel of a scene which has become an institution in the arts community. Many will know the awakening of one's eye to the world of fine art photography. Many will know the feel of falling in love with a photograph and taking it home to be part of their life. All will know the sweet essence that has been emanating in the heart of Denver. With the upcoming closure of the Camera Obscura all will feel the sense of an era passing into the folds of our time.

For over 50 years Hal Gould has been a cornerstone of the photographic arts in Colorado, both as a commercial photographer and as a fine art photographer. For the last 30 of those years Hal has also been the Director of the Camera Obscura Gallery and has tirelessly promoted photography as an art form in state, national and international communities.

The time has come for the Camera Obscura Gallery to close to enable Hal to work on his memoires, to return to the darkroom and to organize his extensive collection of work. The Associate Director of the Gallery, Loretta Young-Gautier, will also focus on her own work, giving free rein to her artistic Muse.
The time has also come for those who have been a student, volunteer, aficionado or collector of photography to reflect on the inspirational role the Camera Obscura Gallery has played in our lives. We are the lucky ones who have awakened to photography in the arts. We are the ones who now bid adieu to the Camera Obscura and are grateful for the long run of Hal Gould as a friend, teacher, and mentor, and for the 18 years given by Loretta Young-Gautier as our lovely hostess, friend and business face of the gallery.

- Greg Matheny

A Note from Hal Gould

Don't believe everything you read! The previous poetic statement is very laudatory, most of it true, except it couldn't have happened without the unprecedented help of many people-especially the Colorado Photographic Art Center, Inc, and many members of the Colorado Council of Camera Clubs.

It all started at a west side motel and bar, where the Colorado Council was holding its annual convention. After the meeting, I was having a beer with James Milmoe, Wayne Smith, Eugene Lang and Glen Thrush. I told them about my dream of organizing a center to promote photography as a fine art, and I wrote down on a drink coaster, "Colorado Photographic Art Center." They all were enthusiastic about the idea and said, "Let's do it! Let's have an organizational meeting next week." We did that and it is unbelievable what happened in the next six months.

The year was 1963. We incorporated as a nonprofit organization with the IRS, insuring tax deductions to donors. We elected officers, Gene Lang, President; James Milmoe, Vice President; Hal Gould, Director of Exhibits (soon to be appointed Executive Director with a salary of $1 per year); Glen Thrush, Secretary; and Darrell Yerly as Treasurer. We conducted membership drives, which garnered 132 charter members at $50 each and 200 regular members at $10 each.

We acquired gallery space at 1301 Bannock Street, across from Denver Art Museum. The membership, with sledgehammer and paintbrush, remodeled the interior, hung prints and we opened the first exhibition with Mathew Brady: Civil War Photographs from recently discovered glass plates that had not been published before. Ansco Corporation made the prints for a traveling exhibition with first showing at Colorado Photographic Art Center.
In early fall, we had a banquet with over 100 people. Ivan Dmitri was guest speaker, who also presented us with a $50 charter membership and original photographs by Norman Cousins, Philippe Halsman, Ansel Adams, Ken Heyman, Walter Chappell and Bert Stern to begin our permanent collection. Popular Photography Magazine published a three page article on the Colorado Photographic Art Center, Inc. in the January 1964 issue.

We presented important photographic exhibitions including several "hang your own" shows by CPAC members; admission was free to the public for over ten years. Then open 10 to 5 six days a week with a gallery receptionist on duty. CPAC had been in business twelve years before photography was first shown in a fine art gallery-Richard Avedon's "Chicago Seven" at New York City's Marlborough Gallery in 1975. That was an epic break through for photography as a fine art medium. This was a great boom for our gallery in Denver. I started exhibiting work by recognized masters of the medium such as Imogen Cunningham, August Sanders, Philippe Halsman, and Yosuf Karsh. Also the market for fine art prints was on the increase and we had sold a few prints, which was a great help in paying rent and salary to the gallery attendant.

However, it also created a conflict of interest for some of the CPAC board members and some of the regular members. One of the new board members said to me, "Why do you keep showing all those people we never heard of? We want to exhibit our own photographs and those of local photographers." At the next board meeting this person made a motion to the Board to prevent me, as Director of Exhibits, from selling any prints from the exhibitions. The motion was approved! And then I resigned my position as Executive Director of CPAC!

A week later I opened The Camera Obscura Gallery at 1309 Bannock Street, and on 7 June, 1980, I presented our first exhibition: Birds in Flight by Eliot Porter with over 300 people in attendance. Following exhibits were: Howard Bond, Ruth Berhard, Judy Dater, Robert Capa, Nadar, et al. Two months after I resigned CPAC closed the gallery at 1301 Bannock Street.

Opening a new gallery is not easy. It takes time, but somehow I persevered. For several years the gallery was not able to hire any help, and the gallery could not have survived without the help of many. We conducted a work study program with several learning institutions in Denver where interns would be scheduled to spend time at our gallery in lieu of class time for credit. Today, many of those interns, from CU Denver, DU, CSU, Art Institute of Colorado, Metro State, Red Rocks Community College and others are now around the world and employed in prestigious positions involving photography in the arts.
But most the important and helpful segment of help has been the volunteers. No way could we have accomplished what we have without them. I fail to find adequate words to express my sincere and eternal gratitude for their faithful and enthusiastic assistance over the many years. I consider them all dear friends and hope to continue to see them. In alphabetical order, the names that come to mind are: Dana Breese, David Bennetts, Mollie Uhl Eaton, Ted Engelmann, Connie Garrett, Colleen Hennessy, Elaine Jarzen, Greg Matheny, Beth Nelson, Tom Parsons, Mary Ann Stephenson, Caroline Gould Stuart, Juliette Gould Wells, Heather Winston, Louann Zachariah, and many others have helped without pay for over thirty years.

Note that I used the word "we" in regard to management of the gallery. I have been blessed to have the volunteers and double blessed to have Loretta Young-Gautier as full time paid Associate Director. She started as volunteer years ago and soon advanced to her present position. Her attributes are too many to list. She has been in complete operation of the computer and involved with me in most all aspects of operation of the gallery, including the publication of our quarterly PFA Newsletter, which we have produced for 27 years. Thank you Loretta!

Last but not least I must express my appreciation and good fortune to have Judy Sanchez as part-time employee in charge of our framing department. She is the best framer in the state (many states), also a close friend and traveling companion.

Owning The Camera Obscura Gallery has been a tremendous experience for 48 years. I'd like to close with a special thank you to all our valued patrons and friends for helping to make a dream come true. Good bye and happy trails.

Hal Gould

Quarterly Quotes

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."

~Anatole France