Photo exhibit captures the charm of all 50 states
Jun. 3—HIGH POINT — Dan Beckmann was lucky enough to see the entire United States of America in about four months, but you can see it in less at the High Point Theatre.
Beckmann's "America the Beautiful Collection," an exhibit of 51 gallery-worthy photographs — one from each state and the District of Columbia — is on display through June 13 in the theater's Main Gallery downstairs. Admission is free.
"I made it a personal goal, while traveling to all 50 states, to get a studio-quality or portfolio-quality photograph in every one of the 50 states," explains Beckmann, a professional entertainer who moonlights as a professional landscape photographer. "I wanted to find a location in every state to capture something that I felt represented that state."
Beckmann's photos run the gamut, from an iconic lighthouse in Maine just before sunrise, to a Mississippi harbor after sunset, to a lonely, snow-surrounded tree in North Dakota. From a pastoral barn scene in Oklahoma, to sunset at Hawaii's Waikiki Beach, to Pilot Mountain in our own North Carolina.
"The photos are varying sizes," Beckmann says. "I wanted the exhibit to be a dynamic experience. I wanted people to be able to walk in and travel the United States in a compressed amount of time — like I did — and have all sorts of experiences in all sorts of shapes and sizes."
From January to May, Beckmann traveled the country with Letters From Home: The 50 States Tour, a patriotic tribute to veterans that he and his fiancee, Erinn Dearth, performed May 25 at the High Point Theatre. That's also when the exhibit opened.
The logistics of traveling with Letters From Home and fulfilling those requirements sometimes made it challenging for Beckmann to seek out photos for his project, he says.
"With landscape photography, a lot of times it's a patience game," he explains. "You find your place and composition, and then you wait for the light to be right, but that wasn't an option for this. Sometimes we spent less than 48 hours in some places, so I had to find something in reasonable proximity to where we were going to be, rather than driving somewhere else to get the photo. It became an exercise in making the best of it and sometimes going to Plan B. It stretched me as a photographer."
In New Mexico, for example, Beckmann's research turned up some of the most gorgeous scenery he'd ever seen, but it was hours and hours away from where he was going to be. So instead, he came up with an artsy photo of the whimsical "Welcome To Roswell" sign, which plays up Roswell's reputation as the supposed site of a UFO crash in 1947.
"It just became a game of how can I get something out of every state that I'm proud of," Beckmann says.
He's happy with the results, though, and he has plans for the photographs: After the High Point Theatre show, he hopes to find other galleries where he can install the exhibit. He also hopes to turn the photos into a coffee-table book, complete with the reflections he wrote to accompany each photo.
"We were given a very unique opportunity to travel the entire United States in a short amount of time," Beckmann says. "I think there's a lot of variety in America worth experiencing, and I want to share that so that other people can get at least a fraction of what I got to experience."
jtomlin@hpenews.com — 336-888-3579
