New Book: THROUGH THE LENS-CREATING SANTA FE

THROUGH THE LENS

"Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe" is a new book/exhibit project at the Palace of the Governor's Museum in Santa Fe.

Since the 1850s many of the most recognized names in photography have focused their lenses in and on Santa Fe. Through their creative efforts they have documented a particular place and its visual history. They helped create that "place" and the mystique of Santa Fe. Photography has long been significant in the construction of notions of space and place, landscape and identity, and especially in Santa Fe, however malleable visual meaning may be, has helped define the geographical imagination.

Curated by photographer and educator Krista Elrick and Palace of the Governor Curator of Photography, Mary Anne Redding, Through the Lens examines the history of Santa Fe through the visual record created by internationally respected photographers. Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe is on view at the Palace of the Governors through October 25, 2009.

I am very pleased to have participated with such an extraordinary group of fine photographers. The book is about how the persona of Santa Fe has been crafted by image makers, photographers in particular. My small contribution is architectural of course, Three Doors. It is an interior of a very famous historic house designed by John Gaw Meem, the father of Santa Fe Style. I shot this on assignment for New Mexico Magazine many years ago. Don't ask me how I lit it! I don't remember. I have tried to reconstruct it and can't. My good friend and managing editor of New Mexico Magazine, Emily Drabanski, was art director on the shoot. It is one of my most favorite interior photographs ever.

My Portfolio-Celebrating the Vernacular and the Abandoned

I was putting together a submission about my work for a wonderful new online magazine (see Fraction Magazine) and visited some "vintage" and new images. The upper "morada" (a chapel of the secretive Catholic "Pentitente" brotherhood) in Abiquiu, New Mexico. from a 4x5 b&w negative, Tri-X, #15 orange filter, (1988).
















and the interior of the Cuervo, New Mexico schoolhouse, a 3 frame stitched image from a Canon 5D, 45T/S lens (2008):















Successful images are as much about light as subject matter. Though very different (one dramatic and one meditative), in each of these two examples, the light drapes the structure in mood and focuses attention while illuminating important secondary details (look at the shade crosses in the background, very bold and stark). Technique and patience supports the mood of the light. By the use of an orange filter, the top image gains drama and contrast and in the lower image waiting for a thin cloud to pass over the sun softens the light (and hence the contrast).