Trent Davis Bailey
The North Fork
Jun 4 - 27 , 2026
In The North Fork, Trent Davis Bailey looks to a remote river valley in western Colorado. A Colorado native himself, the artist was drawn to the vastness of his home state, its rich agrarian history, and the assorted characters who inhabit the Western Slope. He was especially curious about his extended family who used to live there — an aunt, uncle, and cousins — who he hadn’t seen in nearly 20 years. Describing his childhood memories of them, he says: “They lived in a large tent at the base of a mountain. Their backyard had three ponds and a garden where they grew their own food. Beyond that was a dense forest of scrub oak and juniper trees where I imagined coyotes, black bears, and mountain lions lurked.”
Bailey marveled over his cousins’ world and the strange and colorful macrobiotic meals his aunt prepared, but due to a falling out between his father and his uncle, he only visited the North Fork a few times as a child. In 2011, Bailey returned to the valley and for the next seven years he used photography to piece together his experience of the North Fork and its inhabitants. In due time, he not just found his extended family, but he rekindled ties with them while forging his own place within the local community. Then one fateful day, while foraging for mushrooms, he met his now wife with whom he has two children. Collectively, the photographs in this exhibition are informed by that backstory, but they also go well beyond it: conjuring up their own associations of place, food, kinship, and wonder.
In-Person Artist Talk
Sat, Jun 6 at 2 PM
Trent Davis Bailey (American, b. 1985, he/him) is an artist and photographer whose long-term projects look to landscapes and culture in America while reflecting on concepts of community, identity, family, and the archive as well as themes of ecology, regionalism, memory, place, and time. Bailey’s work has been exhibited and published nationally and internationally, and it is held in the permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP), among others. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including 2024 and 2025 Working Assumptions project grants, a 2019 Film Photo Award, the 2015 Snider Prize from the MoCP, and a 2014 Magnum Foundation grant. He has taught photography at a number of institutions including the University of Colorado Denver and the California College of the Arts. His first book, The North Fork, was published by Trespasser (Austin, Texas, USA) in 2023. His second book, Son Pictures, published by Chose Commune (Marseille, France), is due for release in June 2026.