How It Breathes

Denver is a city of visible contradictions. Luxury towers rise alongside crumbling storefronts. Glass and steel atria sit across the street from men sleeping on benches. The gap between the city’s ambitions and the lives lived in its margins is visible on almost every block, if you stop long enough to look. The series also includes not only people I met, but images of Denver itself, alleys, a crumbling wall, a van with curtains in its windows parked behind a fence, the gleaming downtown skyline. These images are not backdrop. They are context. The city and its people are in conversation throughout this work. The architecture of the place and the human lives within it, visible in the same frame or placed deliberately beside each other. This series is called How It Breathes because that is what I wanted the viewer to feel, not informed, not outraged, but present. Like they had just spent two days walking Denver’s streets, stopping to talk to strangers, noticing what the city holds and what it leaves behind. The people in these photographs are not symbols of anything. They are Nance, Raymond, and Sair. They are generous, specific, funny, and complicated. They were worth knowing, even just a little. I hope these images make that clear.