Drury professor brings the American West to Springfield

One of Drury University’s professors, Gregory Booker, has curated and opened an American Western photography exhibit in the Pool Art Center Gallery.

Essences of past, present and future times are displayed in vibrant photographs of natural scenes left untouched by humans, the famous Grand Canyon and even a mysterious alien offering trades. Viewers can step into a parallel universe with real-life rainbow mountains, deep blue midday skies and various life forms.

The title of a single word, “West,” invites a sense of wonder the minute one steps into the gallery, and a feeling that you have perhaps stepped into another dimension. 

However, this world actually isn’t so far away after all. It is the American West, where Booker, a Drury University graduate and University of Oklahoma MFA graduate, was invited to visit by a long-time friend and schoolmate from Drury. She had commissioned his photography skills to create and print art for her new home, art that is representative of the alluring Phoenix area and much more of the Western region.

From here, Booker drove around to multiple locations in the West over five days. His gallery is not only made up of photos from this trip. He was inspired to drive out many more times and add to his evolving collection. 

He only minorly edited his photos displayed in his gallery. “I come from both an art background and a journalism background, and the two are completely different in what you’re allowed to do [in terms of editing],” Booker explains. “In art you can be creative… and Photoshop out things that don’t add to the sense of the photo… and in journalism you have to shoot things as they are, and I struggle with giving myself permission to make changes and edit or doctor photos. I never go crazy with it…but I might have taken out a random tire, or that sort of thing.”

Photography is often overlooked as an art form because everyone has a camera nowadays, Booker reveals, “everybody’s got the ubiquitous camera phone, if nothing else. And I think sometimes photographers… are told that they aren’t artists.” Agreeingly, this is frustrating. Booker enthusiastically states,“ I want to stand up and say, photography IS art!”

In Booker’s childhood, there wasn’t the problem of the usualness of the camera. Booker got his start in photography by finding wonder in his parents’ black-and-white Polaroid camera, devoid of film, when he was six years old. “I just loved the concept of holding this…thing that could take a picture,” he says. Booker also took up drawing, aiming for a style of realism but “could never draw faces as well as I wanted to,” he says, which furthermore fueled his desire to capture personalities and faces with a camera. When he was twelve, he got his very own fully functioning Polaroid, then a 35mm camera in high school. He says, “I knew that photography was just something I wanted to do.”

After taking a few odd jobs to make a footing in the photography business, such as taking photography jobs at Walmart, Phillips Petroleum Company, and various freelance gigs, he became an adjunct professor. Booker then worked for the Kansas City Star as a photo editor, and finally ended up teaching at Drury University, offering various communications classes, including “Visual Storytelling,” a photojournalism skills class. “I always knew I wanted to teach, but I didn’t want to do it right away,” he says, “the plan just kind of worked.”

The First Friday reception of Booker’s gallery took place on February 3rd, with many of Drury’s art and communication professors coming out to show their support for Booker and his art. One former mentor and Drury professor of Booker’s even came to the show to support him.

In the future, Booker hopes to add to “West” by traveling to California and photographing the ocean. “I feel that a photographic essay about the West is not complete unless I get [photos of] the ocean at some point,” he says.

You can visit Booker’s exquisite art until February 24th, 2023, in the main gallery of the Pool Art Center. Viewing hours are 9 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday.