Capturing home

Photographers capture Tulsa’s identity in new exhibition

Tulsa has been home to a number of notable photographers over the decades, including Larry Clark, whose visceral book “Tulsa” shocked viewers when it was published in 1971. In a documentary about his 2011 guerilla show of photos from the book, Lee Roy Chapman said Clark wanted to show us what we didn’t want to see—certainly about what Chapman called our “Leave It to Beaver” hometown, and maybe about ourselves. 

This month and next, a handful of art photographers are making space to tell their own stories of home—the place and the idea—and creating a new outlet for their art in a city that’s never quite known what to do with it. 

Photographer Brooke Golightly, whose digital creations marry Andrew Wyeth colors with dream-consciousness imagery, said photography “can really evoke emotions in people” because of its connection to memory. She joins Steve Monroe, founder of the Back Gallery, and photographers Western Doughty and Amy Rockett-Todd in co-curating a show called “Home,” which opens Friday, Feb. 3 at Mainline Art Bar. Submissions are open to anyone through Jan. 21 and the show will hang throughout February. 

“When I first started ten years ago,” Golightly said, “there wasn’t any photography in galleries and art shows [in Tulsa]. I think that maybe the gallery owners or curators were somewhat reluctant to include photography because … I honestly don’t know. Maybe it was because anybody can pick up a camera.”

A show last year at the Joseph Gierek gallery changed her view on that. 

“Gierek invited 10 to 15 photographers to be part of that show, and it was spilling out into the street—probably the most well-attended show I’ve been to at that gallery.    

“Maybe because so many people consider themselves to be photographers [since the advent of the iPhone], they wanted to see what it took to be in a gallery. It was really inspiring, because you could see that photography wasn’t necessarily just a 2D photo of a landscape or a portrait or whatever. No two pieces seemed the same.”

As with many arts in Tulsa, there’s not an established community of art photographers here that can influence the folks who hold the keys to galleries and print publications. Monroe hopes “Home” might shift that. 

“It’s a little shocking when there’s a high school student doing really amazing work next to someone in their 60s who’s established,” Monroe said. “It pushes us in new ways. It’s important to get older and younger artists interacting. 

“I’d like to see this become a yearly show. I think there’s a lot of talent out there and a lot of room for growth.”

Gaylord Oscar Herron—one of Larry Clark’s contemporaries—agrees that more outlets for photography are needed. Since the 1960s he’s taken thousands of pictures—many of little enclaves, architecture, and people in Tulsa—but many of them sit unpublished in his shop on 16th and Main, G Oscar Bicycles, which serves as a repository for his lifelong loves: bikes and photography.

Herron’s legendary 1975 book “Vagabond” helped put Tulsa on the map as a place where serious art photography was happening. But he doesn’t think Tulsa has ever had a big photography scene. 

“There were very few people doing what I was doing,” he said. “This was documenting Tulsa. I don’t know what Tulsa is now.

“Photographs have to be seen. There’s all kinds of history going on back in the ‘60s and ‘70s that I was photographing all along. It’s historical, as well as editorial. People don’t make [this kind of work] because there’s no outlet for it. I’ve got all this photography energy but there’s no place to put it.”

And yet he continues to shoot—trees and faces and serpentine streets—because he believes in the power of what Henri Cartier-Bresson, the great French photographer of the 1940s, called “the decisive moment.” 

Joseph Rushmore, a young photojournalist new to Tulsa, believes capturing “moments in time that may otherwise get lost” is the reason this art form continues to be important. He’s covered protests at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, the protests and vigils for and funeral of Terence Crutcher here in Tulsa, and the camps at Standing Rock. (Many of Rushmore’s photos have been published in The Tulsa Voice.)

“I try and get really close to people’s faces and see their eyes,” Rushmore said. “The only way you’re going to go out in the streets and protest is if you feel really strongly about it. It’s an honor to photograph people in that state.” 

The more we see these moments—editorial, documentary, or straight out of the imagination—the more we care about where we live and who we are. 

“This is just the precipice of what’s going to happen with photography in Tulsa,” Golightly said.

For more from Alicia, read her article on the state of Performing Arts in Tulsa.