New photography exhibit takes a look behind the face mask

share

DENVER — “Who will we be when the masks come off?”

That’s the question photographer Cecelia Broder has tried to answer with her work, which is now on display at the Museo de las Americas in Denver’s Art District on Santa Fe.

“And then I started thinking, ‘Who will we be when the masks come off, as an individual? As a community, as a nation, as the world,’” Broder explained.

Her photographs are displayed with those of over 50 other photographers in an exhibit called La Nueva Cara, meaning The New Face in English. The exhibit features local artists as well as work from renowned photographers like Imogen Cunningham, whose portrait of Frida Kahlo is on display.

For the first time, the Museo de las Americas is participating in Month of Photography Denver, a festival that happens every other year. Details for the festival, including a calendar of events, are available here.

“The importance of this show is that we’re able to see ourselves in a museum that represents us,” said Judy Miranda, one of the exhibit’s curators.

Miranda emphasized that the exhibit is special not only because the photographers themselves come from diverse backgrounds, but that the style of the art is diverse as well.

One of Rael's photographs

“Being able to display in an exhibit here in the Museo is a way for me to spread the word to other minorities that might be interested in taking up the career of photography,” photographer Jerry Rael said.

Rael, whose work shows poorer neighborhoods in places like Guaymas, Mexico, said his art can be therapeutic for him.

“I see people that are struggling every day,” he explained. And I see a lot of minorities that are really struggling and I think this, for me, is a way to kind of feed my soul, both spiritually and physically.”

La Nueva Cara opened March 26 and will be open to the public until Saturday, April 17.

Broder hopes that people take something away from this exhibit.

“When they look at it,” she said of the artwork, “maybe they will will say, ‘Hmm, who do I want to be when my mask comes off?’”