Preston Utley: Today’s West | LENSCRATCH

Through artful black and white images, Denver-based photographer Preston Utley shows us his vision of Today’s West — a region transformed by transportation, tourism, and development, yet still clinging to old myths and Hollywood clichés. At Grand Canyon National Park, a crowd of tourists obscures our view of an iconic landscape. A movie cowboy grins at us in an antique store in Denver. Stereotypes are very much alive, embodied by a truck cab in New Mexico painted with a logo depicting a “Navajo” girl wearing braids and a feathered headdress. His layered compositions echo those of Lee Friedlander, particularly his creative use of reflections and side-view mirrors as creative framing devices.