YOUR AD HERE »

Opening ‘Pandora’s Box’

Stewart Oksenhorn
"Pandora's Box," a self-portrait by local photographer Lynn Goldsmith, is part of the Summer Fun exhibit, opening with a reception tonight at the Lynn Goldsmith Gallery in Basalt. (Courtesy Lynn Goldsmith Gallery)
ALL |

When Lynn Goldsmith of Old Snowmass describes her recent photography project as “a wrenching and fulfilling experience,” it’s apparent she’s not talking her best-known line of work, taking shots of rock ‘n’ roll stars.

That end of her photography can certainly be fulfilling: In her career of three-plus decades, Goldsmith has captured portraits and stage shots of virtually all of classic rock’s immortals, and contributed numerous photos to the cover of the Rolling Stone. But while it might have had its challenging moments, hanging with Mick and Keith, Dylan, Zappa, and Springsteen probably doesn’t qualify as “wrenching.”Goldsmith was applying that adjective to her In the Looking Glass series. The five-year project comprises self-portraits of the photographer, in a variety of imaginative guises, against elaborate backdrops. The wrenching part came not only in being her own subject, but also in the intensive creative process of making the images.

To relieve the wrenchingness, Goldsmith turned back toward her rock photos. But she couldn’t back off entirely from the Looking Glass series. The recent rock images, which Goldsmith calls “mosaics,” are also computer-intensive. The pieces use some 2,000 images of an individual artist – Springsteen, Zappa, Patti Smith, Gene Simmons of Kiss – to form a montage of tiny photos, as well as a larger composite. Goldsmith says the result is partly an homage to artist Chuck Close.The Summer Fun show, which opens with a reception 5:30 p.m. today at the Lynn Goldsmith Gallery in Basalt’s Mid-Valley Design Center, features the Looking Glass images and the mosaics, and more. John Lund’s humorous dog and cat images are part of the fun. And sure to attract the most attention are the musician images, including portraits of Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and John Lennon, by such photographers as Elliott Landy, Baron Wolman and Herb Greene.



Stewart Oksenhorn’s e-mail address is stewart@aspentimes.com