Skyline Park, Denver, Colorado
May 2003
BW photograph
20" x 16" (26.5” x 19” framed)

Minimum Bid: $150

Gifford Ewing
Submitted by Ann E. Komara

Bio: As a young man stationed in Oklahoma in 1970, Gifford Ewing began photographing black and white landscapes. The New England native was struck by the vastness of the prairies. In 1972, he moved to Denver and opened Gifford Ewing Photography, serving the advertising and architectural communities. At the same time he was earning a reputation as one of the region’s finest photographers for his black and white photography of the country’s varied landscapes. Gifford’s photographs grace collections from Maine to California, including the Denver Art Museum. Recent projects include landscape photographs for the Colorado Nature Conservancy, as well as his ongoing series exploring the landscapes of Maine and the western mountains from New Mexico to Wyoming.

Artist Statement: Skyline Park, a now demolished linear landscape in the heart of downtown Denver, was designed by Lawrence Halprin in the early 1970s. The park presented an intriguing compositional subject that Gifford came to understand quite deeply as he photographed it during its last days. This photograph was shot from the eastern entrance of the third block and shows one of the three unique fountains in Skyline Park. It is the seventy-first image in a numbered sequence of seventy-five views shot to document the park for the first Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) in the state of Colorado. The work was commissioned through the University of Colorado at Denver and Colorado Preservation, Inc. and has been donated by the HALS project team leader. For more information on the Skyline Park HALS project, contact ann.komara@cudenver.edu.