Passion for photography
Open Shutter Gallery exhibits work of Nick Brandt

Margy Dudley, of the Open Shutter, rests below the striking artwork of Nick Brandt, which is currently on display at the gallery. /Photo by Todd Newcomer

by Jules Masterjohn

Margy Dudley has one of the best jobs in town. One can hear the enthusiasm in her voice when she speaks about her loves: photography and people. Just more than four years ago, she fulfilled a dream and established Durango’s only fine art photography venue, Open Shutter Gallery. The gallery’s mission is to promote the medium by showing the work of internationally known photographers as well as the fine work of area photographers, of which there are many. Today, after mounting more than 25 shows, she sits in the gallery surrounded by the current exhibit, work from the acclaimed English photographer Nick Brandt. The show, “On This Earth: Photographs from East Africa,” is one of Dudley’s favorites and came to her in the same serendipitous manner as many of the other high-quality exhibits she has presented over the years.

In October of 2004, Dudley saw an arresting image by Brandt on the cover of CameraArts magazine of an African elephant with a haze of dust rising from its back. This sepia-toned photograph was one of six pictured in the magazine and was enough to convince her that she wanted to host an exhibit of Brandt’s work. Dudley contacted Brandt at his Topanga Canyon studio in California. Though he was leaving the next day for London, he agreed, on the spot, to an exhibit. “I have never had a problem enticing big-time photographers to show their work in Durango. They love coming to the Southwest,” Dudley told me. She mused that perhaps their willingness is due, in part, to the historic love affair that photographers have had with the landscape of the West, to the belief that the Southwest is a power spot for inspiration, or perhaps to the present-day reputation of Santa Fe as a world arts center.

Having known Dudley since the opening of her gallery, I expect that her success in attracting well-known photographers has some merit in these external factors, but more importantly, credit is owed to her warm and genuine approach combined with her . She is a woman with a gentle determination and whole-hearted spirit for her chosen endeavors. Whatever the factors, they have worked in Durango’s favor: Open Shutter has presented the work of a number of internationally known photographers including Lois Greenfield, Pentti Sammallahti, Phil Borges, Pete Turner, Chris Dierdorff and now, Nick Brandt. The fact that such a small town has an exhibit of Brandt’s photographs is, as Dudley put it, “a pretty big deal!”

Brandt’s portraits of East African animals are concurrently on exhibit in Sydney, Australia; Berlin, Germany; and London, England. So what is it about Brandt’s photographs that are catching so many connoisseurs’ eyes? A look through the exhibit reveals portraits of wild animals unlike those usually pictured in National Geographic or wildlife publications. Brandt has married a fine-art medium, black-and-white photography, with a portraitist’s eye to produce representations of wild animals that are intimate portrayals, disclosing their inner beings.

Jane Goodall, famed primate researcher, contributed the introduction to Brandt’s book, On This Earth: Photographs From East Africa. In it she wrote: “The first time I saw Nick Brandt’s pictures, I felt emotionally involved. It was as though I was sharing that moment when animals and landscape merged into one exquisite whole, the moment when the image was captured.” This sense is best illustrated in the photo “Cheetah in Tree, Maasai Mara, 2003.” A cheetah is pictured standing in profile midway up an acacia tree, its form mimicking the tree’s broken branches. For the feline predator, this pose is an ingenious disguise, as it eyes a herd of large creatures walking through the high savanna grasses on the horizon. For the photographer, this is a magic moment. To attain this quality in timing, Brandt does a lot of waiting, spending hours lying in the back of a vehicle, his driver sitting behind the wheel in the event that a lioness gets a bit too curious and a speedy escape is required.

One remarkable aspect of Brandt’s portraiture is his consistent clarity of image. Knowing that he does not use a telephoto lens, I wonder how close he was to the 500-pound lion, for each of its whiskers is clearly visible. Brandt owes his precision imagery to the use of a large-format camera, which results in 6-by-7-inch negatives. Once Brandt has taken his photographs, he scans the negatives into the computer. Using the “dry” technique in Photoshop, he softens images and adjusts the contrasts between light and shadow utilizing manual dodging, burning and chemical baths as one would in a “wet” darkroom. This hybrid technique yields photographs with amazing detail, as is seen in the large-format image of a single elephant, its trunk so intricately wrinkled that one feels as though the elephant is standing in the gallery.

In an interview for LensWork magazine, Brandt offered, “I want to photograph the beauty and dignity and personality of these animals. There are a million and one photographers who can take action photographs of other stuff. I just want to capture the animals in a state of being rather than in action.”

The photo “Chimpanzee Posing, Mahale, 2003” offers visual testimony to Brandt’s words. We sense the essence of its being as the chimp’s relaxed body fills the photograph’s frame, capturing a calm moment as it gazes pensively to the side. Goodall remarked in her introduction, “Looking at some of these photographs reinforces my belief that animals, like us, have souls. Indeed, this whole book (and exhibit) brings to mind the worldview of indigenous people: a spiritual and poetic understanding of the natural world in which animals, nature, and the self are one.”