Western Heritage Museum and Lea County Cowboy Hall of Fame

A Colorful Dream is a family-friendly, interactive exhibition by contemporary fine art photographer Adrien Broom. The exhibit features a suite of photographs, some of them large in scale, detailing a young girl’s journey as she discovers a series of monochromatic fantasy worlds exploring the rich hues and associations that we have with every color in the spectrum. The Huffington Post describes Broom’s photography as “deeply rooted in fairy tales and mythology, reinterpreting figures like Aphrodite and stories like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”

Over three years in her studio, Broom constructed eight individual sets composed of objects evoking the essence of each respective color. She then photographed a young girl exploring and traveling through each world, passing through small portals that lead her on a journey through a red world, then orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and lastly a rainbow encompassing all the colors. Encountering creatures, characters, and vivid landscapes, Broom’s protagonist finds worlds lush, joyful, and even sometimes startling.

In looking at the images, it would be easy to mistake the effects as a digital manipulation of the original photograph. In fact, Broom creates each of these worlds by hand, much like a stage production. These images are not put together using photo-editing software, but are the result of hours of crafting tableaux, so what the viewer sees is in fact what was in front of the camera’s lens during the shoot.

In addition to forty photographic images, the exhibition will include time-lapse videos showing the engrossing process of constructing the live sets for the photographs, offering insight into Broom’s creative process and the production required to bring these images to life.

Adrien Broom is a contemporary fine art and commercial photographer living in Brooklyn, New York. Broom’s fine art photography often alludes to themes of childhood fantasy, using young women as protagonists. Her commercial work includes music, fashion, and portrait photography.  Trained as a computer animator, she has studied fine art in Florence, Italy, and art history in London, England.