Every two years, the Utah Cultural Celebration Center hosts the Wasatch Camera Club’s Utah Travels exhibition. The title is a bit misleading, since while many of the high quality photographs have been taken, as implied, in some of Utah’s most photogenic places, “Utah travels” could just as well mean Utahns go and photograph the world. Indeed, while there are inevitably new perspectives on familiar sights, there are just as certain to be world-famous subjects seen with the same sense of perspective, and likely a few “keepers” that will be totally new to the audience.

This year, in honor of Pride month, the Center has added something extra. While it’s only 18 images, they represent prime choices from celebrated photojournalist Robin Pendergrast’s inventory of more 23,000 images. As will be seen, each of these eighteen captures the feeling of being present at climactic moments of, for, and from PRIDE. To see the beautiful, enthusiastic, and fully engaged attendees at various sites in Salt Lake will either return those who were there to a satisfying point in their lives, or if this is an introduction to the event, bring home the excitement and conviction so often spoken about.

Consequently, it was disappointing to hear, even as UCCC’s photo exhibits were opening, that a decision had been made to eliminate Pride Month in Utah and replace it with Fidelity Month. For those who have been paying attention, “Fidelity” was the focus of a national campaign intended to dilute the universal message of Pride as a feeling about oneself and replace it with the invocation of a narrow code of conduct. It seems it’s like when those who didn’t want to acknowledge that “Black Lives Matter” set out to replace that slogan with “All Lives Matter.” Imagine if, instead of Utah Travels, the title was changed to “Everyone Travels.” No news there. Clearly, pride, whether in one’s place of origin or ones fought-for lifestyle, is something art can, and does, address and present through familiar images, places, and people.

Can we not say that there has been a connection between the pride felt by Utahans and the particular virtues the State stands for? What happens to that pride-in-place when those virtues are abandoned? The disconnect that follows can perhaps best be invoked by an art experience, such as comparing the feeling one gets on seeing the State Capitol as the backdrop for an ecstatic evocation of pride, and then realizing that someone wasn’t sufficiently moved by viewing the art to stand up for its actual subject matter.

Pride Along the Wasatch, Utah Cultural Celebration Center, West Valley City, June 8 – June 23, 2026

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.