Good exposure
Mature Men of La Plata County take it all off for community

John Anderson, a relative newcomer to La Plata County, has discovered a new career as a certified ski instructor at Durango Mountain Resort. In addition to his national consulting work on public education reform policies, he also serves on the boards for the Durango Arts Center and Music in the Mountains./Photo by Paul Boyer

by Todd Thompson

T he very idea of a nudie calendar is a titillating motif. It's a brilliant marketing device that continues to sell car parts and tools the world over. Even though there is usually no actual porn in these photos, the strategic exposure of yards of flesh is enough to make anyone look, whether they want to or not.

The 2003 movie "Calendar Girls" extended the concept of the nudie calendar to include a desperate but dignified stab at fund raising by a group of older women in Britain who were willing to expose their own near-monty to raise money for a local hospital. It was perhaps an inevitable extension of the joke to create a fund-raiser featuring some naked old guys.

Last winter, Dennis Lum decided to bring the idea home. Lum, 59, is a community volunteer in Durango and a board member of Operation Healthy Communities. He proposed the idea for the "Mature Men of La Plata County" calendar to some other board members and got a lot of good laughs but no action. As the months wore on, the seed he had planted began to grow, and soon the project had taken on a life of its own.

"It started out being funny," says Lum. "But pretty soon it seemed like a feasible project. I read an article in Organic Gardening recently that said about 40 different groups around the country have produced similar calendars in the last two years and have raised a total of about $1.5 million."

Lum approached Durango photographer Paul Boyer who expressed his immediate enthusiasm. That was when the funny calendar became a fine art project. "I have to give full credit to Paul for his work on this calendar," says Lum. "He made this into a really tasteful and attractive work of art."

Paul Boyer has been a professional photographer for more than 30 years. He moved to Durango about five years ago and had been looking for an opportunity to volunteer. "I was really excited to be a part of this project," says Boyer. "I believe we do our best work when we work in a community, working with other people who are interested and invested in their community."

Boyer has made a career out of interesting portraiture, so he was very attracted to the calendar project. "I approached this the same way I approach every project," he said. "I go to it with full gusto, no holds barred. I try to take ordinary people and make heroes out of them."

After shooting 12 portraits in four hectic days, Boyer retreated to his digital studio and began transforming his raw pictures into pieces of art. "I didn't want do use Photoshop for anything that felt weird, " he said, "but I wanted to add something artistic that would bring someone to look at it again. It's pretty easy to take a picture of a guy with his clothes off and get the shock value, but I wanted something with more of an interesting composition and structure."

Ed Morlan, 54, executive director of the Region 9 Economic Development District of Southwest Colorado, takes a break from handyman work to pose with one of his prized power tools. He and his wife, Jackie, live in Bayfield./Photo by Paul Boyer

After shooting 12 portraits in four hectic days, Boyer retreated to his digital studio and began transforming his raw pictures into pieces of art. "I didn't want do use Photoshop for anything that felt weird, " he said, "but I wanted to add something artistic that would bring someone to look at it again. It's pretty easy to take a picture of a guy with his clothes off and get the shock value, but I wanted something with more of an interesting composition and structure."

He manipulated the photos using the selective focus technique, hearkening back to a photographic effect achieved with an old view camera. He spent several hours with each photo, bringing different elements into and out of focus until he felt that the photo directed the viewer's eye.

Lum and the board of Operation Healthy Communities chose the models for the calendar based on their civic involvement and notoriety. All of the men are 50 years or older, and all of them were very enthusiastic and cooperative, according to Lum. "We're really just ordinary guys like anyone else," says Lum. "Older guys don't get much respect for our bodies, so we got together and said, 'Let's show people we're proud of ourselves and we're proud of our community.'"

Bob Salzer is the La Plata County Extension Director and has worked as a 4-H agent for 30 years. He and his wife, Billie, have three grown children, whom he says, “Fortunately no longer live at home.”/Photo by Paul Boyer

Models include former Durango Mayor John Gamble, former Ignacio Mayor Balty Quintana, former Fort Lewis College President Joel Jones, former La Plata County Commissioner Josh Joswick, current La Plata County Commissioner Bob Lieb, Durango Director of Planning Greg Hoch, and six others. All of them have expressed their support for Operation Healthy Communities and all were glad to offer themselves up for this fund-raiser, according to Lum.

Operation Healthy Communities has done 10 years of community-based nonprofit work in Durango but remains unknown to many. "OHC does a lot of great work with a very small staff," says Lum. "We have tackled a number of major issues, we host the Community Summits, we work on affordable housing and study living-wage issues, and we help other nonprofits in the area coordinate their efforts. We are working to convene a Youth Summit with students from the three high schools in La Plata County. And we also publish the Pathways to Healthier Communities Index, which is used by banks, human resource directors and other nonprofits in their grant writing."

According to OHC Executive Director Laura Lewis, the organization "builds capacity for change" by mobilizing citizens, organizations and governments to work together. "Working with communities is messy and chaotic work," she says, "but it offers limitless opportunities to make a difference. The underlying notion of healthy communities is that well-

informed people, working together in an effective process, can make a profound difference in the health and quality of people's lives.

"We hope this calendar will be a fun way to celebrate our community," concludes Lewis , "and that it will be an effective fund-raiser for us to continue our work." ☯