New Phoenix aerial photography exhibit finds beauty in the ordinary

Looking down from the open door of a Robinson R66 helicopter, semi trucks look like mosaic tiles. Wild horses grazing by a river are as small as ants; passengers come face to face with the mountains they usually look up at.

It’s the way Donn Delson likes to see the world.

Delson’s mesmerizing style of aerial photography is the focus of “The Space Between,” his solo exhibition opening on Saturday, Feb. 22 at the Axiom Contemporary art gallery at Biltmore Fashion Park in Phoenix.

"The Space Between" is composed of four dozen images of trucks and shipping containers. Delson, who lives in Los Angeles, shot most of the show's photos at that city's port, although others were taken in Miami, Tokyo and New York.

The series began by chance, Delson says.

"When I first started, I just randomly found the port in L.A. and I thought, 'This is a fun place to shoot,' and I liked the containers and the way they are and the way they looked.

"And it was only in the last year or so that I realized that while the art and the color and the symmetry is beautiful, what’s even more interesting is the space between, which is why I named the show that. Because if you look at the containers, you see they’re set up in random patterns and different ways, and some of them are closed in on each other and some of them are grouped in different sections, but the most important part are the places where they are not, because that’s the only part that allows any functionality. Everything else is structured and tight."


In "Strength in Stripes," the colors of five trucks become an abstract interpretation of the American flag that evokes the work of Mark Rothko, whose work he cites as an influence. In "Sliding Tiles," the one black space amid a smattering of gray, blue and green shipping containers is the surprising focal point of the image.

"That is a metaphor for life as well," Delson says, "because when we’re having conversations, the gaps, the spaces in the conversation is where a lot of the meaning takes place. In music, the rhythm comes from the gaps, from the silences in the music. So I became fascinated with the fact that the real transformation happens in the (empty) spaces."

Delson's path to aerial photography was a transformation as well. An interest in photography as a young boy led to him shooting sports in high school. But once marriage, children and a career building multiple businesses came, "my pictures became family vacations and kids," he says.

When he sold his last business in 2010 and retired, he returned to photography as a hobby. Then, in 2014, he found his particular passion.

While on vacation in New Zealand, he and his wife took a helicopter ride to a glacier. As Delson took photos out of the window, "the pilot said, 'You look like you know what you’re doing — do you want me to open the door?' I said, 'Oh, my God, yes,' and that was it. I was hooked."

More than 10 years later, Delson has taken photos above Arizona and Israel, London and Tokyo, and many places in between.

"What’s exciting for me is that there’s beauty in the ordinary," Delson says. The things we look at every day — you see a semi tractor-trailer driving down the road, you say it looks beat up ... it’s not pretty — but from above, it’s about perspective and the fact that things on the ground take on different identities when seen from above."

The Axiom Contemporary show is the first time his work will be displayed in Arizona; along with "The Space Between," a number of his images from other countries will be available for view and purchase.

Long before Delson ever went up in a helicopter, he read "The Once and Future King" by T.H. White, and was fascinated by the scene in which Merlin turns the young Arthur into a goose so he can fly and see the world from above.

"I was struck by the feeling I got by imagining that I was the goose and I was flying with the flock above the world," he recalls. "When I’m up in the helicopter with no door and I’m looking out, I feel that same sense of freedom, I feel that same sense of wonder."

"The Space Between" opening reception: 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22. Axiom Contemporary at Biltmore Fashion Park, 2502 E. Camelback Road. The show continues through mid-March. Visit the Axiom Contemporary website or Donn Delson's website for more information.