“You know what was great about having Skip in class? It’s that he was quiet, gentle, and very open minded. And a good regular worker. And teachers depend on steady people. They love students who are open minded.” Betty Hahn, 2018.
L-R: High School prom photo, ca. 1959; Oaxaca, Mexico, photo by Lisbeth Neergaard Kohloff; College graduation photo, ca. 1965. Source: “deja-vu” exhibition flyer, 2001.
Colorado’s photo community lost a legendary figure last December when R. Skip Kohloff passed away at his home in Golden, CO. In addition to his personal career as a high school educator and artist he and his wife, Lisbeth Neergaard Kohloff, were central figures at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center for more than twenty-five years in the 1980s-2000s.
I interviewed them both in July 2017, and am grateful we were able to revisit our conversation last fall, when Skip was confined to his bed but still able to dot the i’s and verify the odd obscure detail. All the quotes included below are from that interview unless otherwise noted.
When Skip and Lisbeth arrived in Denver from Rochester, NY in 1977, both had recent graduate degrees in photography. Skip studied with Betty Hahn at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and ran the school’s MFA Gallery. Among artists he exhibited was Jerry Uelsmann, who was a former RIT student. Both Hahn and Uelsmann maintained a friendship with the Kohloffs and exhibited at CPAC during their tenure there.
After a spell as RIT’s receptionist, Lisbeth studied the history of photography with Bill Jenkins at the University of Rochester (Jenkins was the curator of 1975’s New Topographics exhibition). While at UR she worked at the George Eastman House with its director, Bob Doherty. Doherty became a close mentor to her, and among other things tasked her with organizing the Eastman House’s Lewis Hine collection.
The Kohloffs moved to Colorado after a friend asked Skip to help “resurrect” the photography program at Cherry Creek High School. He agreed to stay for two years. After that, he recalled, there were “no guarantees. However, I stayed there for over twenty!”
Lisbeth hoped to start teaching photo history right away. She taught some evening classes at Red Rocks but found university art departments resistant to the subject. She “did this, did that” for a couple of years until Ruth Thorne-Thomsen hired her to teach at UC Denver. When Judith Thorpe took over the photo department several years later she added criticism and theory to her history curriculum.
Skip Kohloff: untitled, nd. Hand-colored infra-red print.
One lesser-known aspect of both Skip’s life is his career as an artist. In November 1980, a show of his work titled Xerographic Imagery opened at the Colorado Photographic Art Center’s first Bannock Street location, in a back room space called the New Directions Gallery. His experiments with machine-generated images had begun at RIT using a Xerox 6500 copier, which he used to generate color copies of grainy black-and-white prints. During that early period he also worked in collage, combinations of various three-dimensional objects, and various paper stocks.
In May 2001, John Grant curated a retrospective of his work at CPAC titled déjà vu: Selected Photographs 1971–2001 and wrote that Skip “has quietly created an important body of work that can only be rivaled by his contributions to the photographic community.” The show included 95 prints that, according to Westword critic Michael Paglia, displayed “a relentlessly experimental approach” and a compositional and conceptual framework that had remained consistent since Skip’s student days, when he had tested prototype copier machines at the Xerox headquarters in Rochester. [1]
That consistency included dynamic elements of mystery and light that he accentuated through the use of infra-red film and hand coloring on gelatin silver fiber paper. Abstract compositions in series such as Spherical Silhouettes (1972–73) and In Another Light (1977) juxtapose shadows with over-lit backgrounds, while religious statues, chairs, shoes, and other objects suggest a human presence within environments devoid of actual people.
For the humorous (and in this instance figurative) Aunt Emma Somewhere over the Rainbow, and Aunt Emma in the Shade of an Old Apple Tree (both ca. 1983, shown below) Skip incorporated a xeroxed portrait of the eponymous Aunt with imagery from “The Wizard of Oz” and enclosed the collage in an embossed ragboard window.
Many, if not most, photo communards who were active in the 1980s-2000s associate Skip and Lisbeth most closely with the Colorado Photographic Arts Center. Skip’s affiliation with CPAC began in 1978 when he attended as an artist member. Lisbeth joined him on the CPAC board in 1982. Her acceptance came as tensions between board members and with Hal Gould’s Camera Obscura gallery next door came to a head. “I'll never forget this,” she recalled. “I became a board member the same night that [CPAC President] Glenn Cuerden got up and said, “We’re moving out.” And I went, ‘Welcome to the Titanic.’”
Skip was elected president after Cuerden’s resignation in 1986. He split the running of the organization with Lisbeth, who took on the role of Gallery Manager (both were volunteers for the entirety of their respective twenty-seven- and twenty-four-year tenures at CPAC).
The demands of operating a center-without-walls were considerable. Both were strong believers in nurturing community through membership benefits such as annual potlucks, juried member shows, and special events. An award program benefited local artists and CPAC members, among them Susan Goldstein, David Sharpe, John Bonath, and Gary Lynch. Summer workshops led by the Kohloffs to Oaxaca, Mexico were integrated into the gallery’s workshop program.
Exhibitions were held offsite until 1999, when CPAC moved into a shared space with the Carol Keller Gallery at 1503 Boulder Street. The Kohloffs opened the new gallery with a show by Patrick Nagatani, a close colleague who taught with Betty Hahn at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
In 2006, Skip and Lisbeth retired and CPAC entered the third nomadic period of its existence, which lasted five years until the organization’s merger with Working With Artists in Lakewood. Skip’s perspective on their legacy at CPAC is that, “We were able to build it up locally and maybe a little bit regionally, to more of a known entity. The national bit would have come later. But I think—I believe—we were able to do that and give it more prestige than it had had in the past.” Doubtless, he and Lisbeth’s efforts had the same impact on Colorado photography in general.
Skip passed away in December 2020 after a long illness. Lisbeth continues to live in their home in Golden. An obituary published by CPAC can be found at: https://cpacphoto.org/remembering-skip-kohloff/
[1] Grant and Paglia quotes from Michael Paglia, “It’s in the Air,” Westword, June 7-13, 2001.
Photo credits for image galleries above: Four infra red landscapes from the Gardens of the Fleeting Moment series, 2002-03. Giclee prints; Lower gallery, L-R: Untitled (Plant), nd. Hand-colored infra-red print; Untitled (Carousel), nd. Hand-colored infra-red print; Aunt Emma Somewhere over the Rainbow, ca. 1983. Color xerox collage with embossing, 11 x 14 on 15 x 22 in. paper; Aunt Emma in the Shade of an Old Apple Tree, ca. 1983. Color xerox collage with embossing, 11 x 14 on 15 x 22 in. paper.
CPAC images, L-R: Photographers unknown: CPAC Members Show reception, ca. 2000 (Carol Keller at right); Skip conducting a portfolio review; Skip with Patrick Nagatani, ca. 1999; Skip in Oaxaca, Mexico, nd. Photo by Lisbeth Neergaard Kohloff.
The Colorado Photo History blog is the online presence for “Outside Influence,” a book project by Rupert Jenkins. As always, please leave a comment or a suggestion for future posts, and visit #Colorado Photo History on Instagram and Facebook.
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