Pabitra Niroula

The woman in the photo is Pabrita Niroula's mother-in-law. She and Pabrita came to Colorado from Nepal, where they lived in a refugee camp and slept on hard bamboo beds.

In January, Pabrita was one of eight Bhutanese women given a digital camera and asked to document her life as a refugee for a photo exhibit called picture. me. here. Pabrita told the project's facilitators that she took the photo because her mother-in-law looked peaceful -- a feeling that was sometimes elusive in their home country. "It made her feel so good to know her mother-in-law was able to rest on something so comfortable and soft," says Kristen Damron, the women's programs coordinator for Lutheran Family Services.

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While it often gets overshadowed by the music scene, Denver actually has a rich history of underground literature. From the Kerouac-inspired bohemian coffee and bookshops of 1960s Colfax to the Yellow Rake readings at Old Curtis Street Tavern, our city has been spawning independent works of fiction and poetry for decades. And there are few locals today more closely associated with DIY publishing than Charly "The City Mouse" Fasano. Whether hustling his books of poetry or impressively crafted audio-books, or giving one of his now iconic readings (he once opened a sold-out show at the Gothic -- an audience size almost unheard of for a live poet), Fasano has rooted himself in this city, becoming as much a part of the creative fabric as home-brew or cutesy indie-folk bands.

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Edward Weston: "Dunes, Oceano," 1936.

Edward Weston holds an upper berth in the pantheon of modern American photography, and it's easy to see why. A solid Modernist who began working in the early twentieth century, Weston -- who was also a great technician in the darkroom -- breathed life into inanimate objects and places, turning nautilus shells, peppers and rippled dunes, with their natural curves and shadows, into sensual images seething with inner beauty. And when he took on the human form itself, well -- look out! Just as his still lifes and landscapes anthropomorphize shapes, Weston's nudes picture humanity in its most lovely, natural state.

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Scott Russell

Scott Russell expected to find stories, and he did. On bike rides between Denver's alleys and street corners, he found twenty of them, eleven of which will be on display this weekend at Wazee Union at Cardboard & Concrete, the project that resulted. But there were a few surprising turns in his attempt to turn Denver's sign-fliers into works of art, to put a few faces on the city's homeless issues. He didn't expect to change his mind, for example.

"I'd go around on my bike, and I'd feel drawn to people," Russell says. "There are just so many stories out there, and I felt changed by all of them. What I didn't expect was a new perspective -- on homeless people and on people in general."

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Mark Sink

If you noticed that Sunday's weather was particularly welcoming, you were not alone. But you probably didn't appreciate it quite as much as the fifty people wandering around the grounds of the Zang Mansion. For the first time, the sun smiled on Denver's celebration of Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. Although the film-friendly event extends back more than ten years, the Denver version, hosted by the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, had been blighted by clouds and cursed with long exposures for all four years of its history.

Until now.

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The Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown and Gameroom Expo went down over the weekend, with more than 100 pinball machines and arcade games available -- no quarters required. (Attendees paid a flat fee.) "We had about 1,800 people," says organizer Daniel Nikolich. "I think it went great, we had a lot of great vendors and speakers received."

"You can't replicate pinball on an Xbox or a Playstation," he adds.

Indeed you cannot. And the artistic quality of the backlgass -- the upright display on each machine -- may be what sets pinball machines apart from their digital counter-parts. Here are the best examples of backlgass art found by photographer Chris Morgan.

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Selp portrait on Gasherbrum II by Cory Richards, courtesy Forge Motion Pictures

The American Alpine Club announced this week that Boulder-based photographer Cory Richards has won its 2012 Rowell Award for the Art of Adventure. The $15,000 award, which will be officially presented next month during Mountainfilm in Telluride, is named for photographers Galen and Barbara Rowell, who died in a plane crash in 2002.

"Cory is inspired by the human elements, man's struggle with the wilderness and nature," wrote members of the Rowell Legacy Committee, in his award citation. "He has the rare ability to capture the rawness in all of us."

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Fergus Falls State Hospital, Minnesota, established in 1887 to deal with an overcrowding problem, was originally called the "Third Minnesota State Hospital for the Insane."

With their red-brick walls and stone turrets, many of America's mental hospitals look eerily like sanctuaries. Some of these facilities genuinely endeavored to do good. Others have darker histories, belied by the elegance of the architecture. In The Empty Places, a photo collection and soon-to-be-produced documentary, Ralena Gordon tries not just to depict the physical structures that once housed the mentally ill, but to imbue them with emotion and memory.

A fundraiser to push the project is set for 6 p.m. this Saturday, April 14, at the Mercury Cafe.

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The West Coast punks are pogoing into town this spring at MCA Denver, Gildar Gallery, the Colorado Photographic Arts Center and other locations, for a series of shows falling under the aegis of Search & Destroy. So-named for the San Francisco 'zine or the '70s), the ring of satellite shows came to rest Friday night, March 29, 2012 at MCA, where a reception with live music opened to the public at 8 p.m. Read more about Search and Destroy at MCA.

Below are a few scenes from the opening and here's the full slide show: Search and Destroy opening at MCA.

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"Chelsea," by Jesse Myers.

The image above -- a wonderful posed moment gone awry -- caused quite a stir in Denver's Art District on Santa Fe last year: first, as part of tbellphotographic's juried show, Is This How I Look?, where Ken Hamel gave it top honors, and again when I did the same as the jurist for the Art District on Santa Fe's Best of 2011 show. I'm still in love with it, in all its skewed perfection, but it's time to move on.

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