Show Preview | Cody Brothers - Southwest Art Magazine

Santa Fe, NM
Modernist Frontier, May 22-June 19

Cody Brothers, Pueblo Bonito Front, photograph, 21 x 60.

This story was featured in the May 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art May 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

WHEN CODY BROTHERS won a prestigious grant from the National Park Service and the National Endowment for the Arts in 2016, as part of the national centennial program “Imagine Your Parks,” he considered it a pinnacle in his career as a landscape photographer. It was, after all, the evocative photography of Ansel Adams that inspired Brothers’ own early love for our national parks and western landscapes. “When this grant came about, I thought, this is what I’m about anyway, this is what I do—I try to inspire people to go see these places,” says Brothers, whose award helped fund his photographic excursions into some of the most stunning national parks in the West.

: Cody Brothers, Bristlecone Pine, photograph, 40 x 32.

: Cody Brothers, Mission and Convento Kiva, photograph, 22 x 72.

: Cody Brothers, Pueblo del Arroyo, photograph, 50 x 40.

This month the New Mexico photographer’s expeditions culminate in a solo show at Modernist Frontier in Santa Fe, NM, where as many as 25 luminous black-and-white film studies are on view. The show, entitled The Forgotten Horizon, opens on Wednesday, May 22, followed by an artist’s reception that Friday at 5 p.m. Over the course of more than two years, Brothers made multiple treks to six western parks, including Death Valley, Great Basin, and Lake Mead National Recreation Area. At each park, he patiently scouted out dozens of potential sites before returning to pho-tograph them. “I’d walk the trails, take notes, and decide this shot is best in the morning, this one in the evening, this one in the springtime, this one in the fall,” he says. “Basically, I created a shooting schedule for the project.” The light, the weather, the season, the scene—it all needed to harmoniously align before the photographer could capture just the right shots using his small field camera and larger panoramic camera. Snapping limitless shots isn’t a luxury with analog photo-graphy, says Brothers, adding, “You have to know what you’re going for.”

The photographer develops his film in a darkroom at the professional photo lab he and his wife operate in Santa Fe, where he then scans selected negatives to create digital chromogenic prints that are mounted for final presentation. Brothers’ routine use of infrared film, in particular, intensifies the brilliant highlights and vivid contrasts that typify his crisp, dramatic imagery. “To get the glow of the trees and the dark skies, it’s all a matter of how you filter and process the film,” he says. “Those are all lost arts now.” —Kim Agricola

contact information
505.557.6896
www.modfrontier.com