Denver

Or: How to Maintain a Positive Altitude

Writing about a place you used to live is a lot like writing about an ex. It’s fine to reference it briefly, but the longer you go on, and the more oddly specific details you reveal, the more intensely you convince people that there’s something unresolved beneath the surface that you’re ignoring. “Has he gotten over her yet?”

That puts me in a bit of a bind because photography as a medium is already inclined to fetishize the past - either in technique (film over digital) or in technology (the best sensors, the longest lasting batteries). It’s all configured towards taking a slice out of the present and preserving it in amber before it decays into “the past”.

In the run-up to my wedding, I took two trips back home to Denver to visit friends and family. The weird thing is, I’m technically not from Denver. I was born at a Denver hospital, but I lived outside the city limits for all of my childhood. Whenever anyone asks, I have to say (for simplicity) that I grew up “near” Denver, because no one knows where Parker is.

That didn’t stop Denver from rubbing off on me. I think anyone who lives close-ish to a major city, but also far enough away that just walking downtown isn’t a possibility without transportation are either evangelized by the cultural output or diametrically oppose it and move away at first opportunity. I was a casualty of the former. Denver was my cultural reference point, the planet I got caught orbiting as a young asteroid in my DC shoes and Original Penguin polo. (I don’t know if that was the style in Denver; that was just what I saw at Kohl’s that looked cool.) Even though I didn’t have the zip code to prove it, I identified with the city, if for no other reason than it being where all my favorite bands went on tour.

So, fast-forward nearly 10 years. I’m engaged while living on the other side of the country. Any early teenage philosophies about how cool Denver is have evaporated away because of responsibilities inherited and decisions made during the COVID-19 pandemic. That isn’t Denver’s fault. I changed. Denver didn’t.

That takes us to the big question: how do you photograph that change when your subject matter looks the same as it did when you left?

Two things were important for me to keep in mind in my attempt to answer that question. First, this was not a trip down memory lane. I’ve grown tired of the nostalgia that wafts off of my own memories. It stinks, and I think anyone trying to make a case for “how good things were” at any point in the past only reveals that they’re out of ideas. Besides, what good would it do either of us if the tone of this photo set was, “Man, that one weekend way back when sure was fun”.

Second, and this is a newer revelation for me: the details aren’t that important. I spent a lot of time keeping track of how long it had been since moving away because I presumed that was important to do, like brushing your teeth or writing thank you notes. As the plane taxied to the gate at DIA, I felt a sense of relief upon realizing I didn’t know when I was last back here. Not that I didn’t want to come back to visit, it’s just that it wasn’t as important as I thought it was to quantify it.

So, have I “gotten over” where I grew up? Probably not, but I also don’t think anybody does. Not in a way that matters. No matter what you do or where you go, the details of your birth certificate and all the lore that comes along with it doesn’t change.

What follows are scenes from the periphery. I am on the outside looking in, peeping over the hedges at the enclosure I used to run around in. In no particular order or sequence, they are an inventory of things I saw and gravitated towards as a newly minted “outsider”. Sites like the airport, a hotel, or even my college campus all took on new meaning from the forced perspective of a stranger. I used to be a “local”. Now I am not, and I find this set expresses what it means to experience that shift and to start comprehending the distance, the actual distance, between those two terms.

I hope you enjoy.

Sodfotog