Jeff Mulliken

Puerta Vallarta Colors

For years I’ve had a love affair with Mexico. The vernacular architecture, the food, and the music might be enough – but I think it’s the welcoming nature and quiet optimism of the Mexican culture – that calls me back. I see this culture reflected in the colors chosen to embellish the simplest of elements – the buildings, at eye level.

Puerta Vallarta Colors was shot over three days in this once sleepy fishing port, that is becoming a busy tourist destination. But the old stone, stucco, and cement surfaces remain, often adorned with aged hardware and utilities – and they are constantly refreshed with new paint in a celebratory palette. To me, these colors communicate the spirit of the Mexican culture.

Artist Bio

Jeff Mulliken has practiced architecture for over 35 years, but has maintained an interest in photography since a teen, with his first camera, a Kodak Instamatic. His fascination with shape, form, color, and composition, essential to successful architectural design, inspires his photographic images. In recent years his architectural work focused on workplace interior design, where these same issues interface with the practical and functional needs of people at work. Jeff thinks that this had led him to be attracted to photographic subject matter in the everyday world around us.

What formal photographic training he has includes college elective courses in photography, and classes at the New England School of Photography, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

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