Many years ago, before I moved to New Mexico, I read somewhere about “the light.” The unique New Mexico light. The convergence of altitude, lack of pollution and maybe, something else, something magical. The light here is something I can take for granted. I sometimes resent the sunshine that arrives almost on a daily basis…300+ days a year here. Oh, please just a few more cloudy, overcast, grey, rainy days. But then, I roll up to my office, and see a simple street corner, bathed in perfect October light. No clouds. No filters. This is what “the light” can do; what it can show. And I am reminded, and I am grateful.
2021: 8 ........ Get Closer
Winter came down hard on the US this week, and New Mexico was no exception. Thankfully, we never lost power or water or internet… count your blessings, right? The snow cancelled my weekly sojourn to the bosque on Thursday, depriving me and my fellow photographer our time to talk process, to vent about sundry frustrations, and to make some photographs. Luckily, snow doesn’t stick around too long in these parts, our dry climate and abundant sunshine melting away most snowfall by midday.
I wandered Downtown Albuquerque on Friday for a few hours, expecting it to be fairly quiet, thanks to ongoing pandemic restrictions. The plus side of course was plenty of parking. Gear alert: I put extension tubes in between my lens and camera, allowing me to play a bit with extreme close up photography. Technical issues and approaches are not usually a big concern of mine. The end justifies the means, ultimately. I don’t care what tricks it takes to make an interesting image…most of the time. And I gather that with the exception of a few peers and inquisitive photo dweebs, most viewers don’t really care how you made your photograph.
This set up forced me to focus on small details, bending and kneeling and getting in within a few inches of my subject matter. Added bonus to this approach was the fact that I was doing this in a fairly barren back alley in the middle of the city. Not too worried about being smacked in the back of the head while setting up a shot…or getting run over by a distracted delivery driver, but you never know what’s lurking behind that dumpster. To my point, while I was hunched over a frozen pothole filled with ice and water, a random dude rolled up on his bicycle, with a full bottle of St. Germain in his hand. He asked for help unscrewing the cap, as it apparently had gotten gummed up from dried liquor and was impossible to open. I guess that’s why it ended up in the back alley, and then in his hands.
Anyway, the exploration taught me a few things. First off, there’s nothing wrong with playing with different approaches in my image making. I generally don’t likely “macro” photography. I find it a bit of a gimmick, and the whole idea of seeing a miniature world up close feels slightly cliche and predictable to me. But the process did force me to challenge those biases, and fight the urge to give up. I certainly wasn’t expecting to do a series of ice crystal studies behind a barber shop in downtown Albuquerque, but that’s where I landed. No harm, no foul. It was a fun diversion, and I’m not against the idea of pushing this approach further. “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” Robert Capa famously said. It’s been repeated ad nauseam. I guess it took a detour in my usual approach to discover the truth to it, after all. A lesson learned.
2020: 44 (Hope and Change)
The weather is changing, autumn is in full effect. The colors in the bosque are at their peak. Golden yellow and reds dominate. Three visits this week yielded much comfort, and many photos. I wandered through the thicket on Thursday and came across this Bible, in the middle of the woods, not near any path. I snapped it with my iPhone (sacrilege, I know) while also doing a few shots with my Holga. I decided to revisit the scene on Friday, with some slide film in my Leica (again… sacrilege) that I intended to cross-process. Leaves had fallen on the open book since the day before. Change. Hope. In 2020 we need both.
I also voted yesterday, to complete the theme for the week.
2020: 33 (A Respite)
I was able to saunter around Albuquerque for a few hours yesterday. An uncharacteristic cloud cover hung over the city, granting me extended photo time minus the usual harsh shadows of the high desert. Throughout this pandemic, I’ve had a deep desire to take a photo road trip… endless miles of road, a few cameras in the passenger seat. That is my release. Of course, this hasn’t happened in many months, and probably won’t happen anytime soon. So a precious escape around town, face masked and distanced from other people, will have to suffice. Thankfully, I live in a visually diverse city. Weird, wonderful Albuquerque. To quote The Stranglers… “I can think of a lot worse places to be…”
2020: 14 (Back To The Bosque)
Spring is in the air, even if this is a spring like no other. Nature doesn’t pay much attention to the trials and tribulations of humans. The birds are chirping every morning, the plants and trees are sprouting, the temperature is warming, the days are getting lighter. Thankful for all of this, as I spend most of my time in my house, at my computer.
Working from home is a luxury, but it is also a challenge to set boundaries, and conference calls and answering emails, and Zoom sessions are tiring in their own way. So it is that time outside that really feeds me. I’ve started running in the mornings again. The park is almost always empty, a nice chill in the air that dissapates as the sun rises.
I also had the opportunity this week to head back to the bosque, along the Rio Grande, to continue my year-long project. Wandering the woods along the river, right after sunrise, was inspiring and restorative. The light was gorgeous, the ducks and geese where flying and calling overhead. Some trees and grasses were showing their green again, but the mighty cottonwoods have yet to come back to life and color. That will be a treat for another visit.
It is a great joy to shoot one roll of film, 72+ exposures via the half-frame camera, in one outing. It is liberating, especially not giving much concern to each individual image. Instead, treating the entire roll of film as its own thing. I look forward to the 5 more months I have on this project, and really look forward to making a zine of this work when the project is completed.
If you can, get outside and breathe the fresh air, feel the sun on your skin, and listen to the birds.
2020: 4 (New Mexico in Photographs)
Having grown up on the east coast, one of the most common questions I am asked is how did I end up living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s actually a fairly common query for anyone who is not a native of “‘burque,” or of New Mexico in general. In reality, many folks in the west have migrated here from other places. Many in search of warmer weather, a slower pace, a more affordable existence. All of these reasons could apply to my own experience, but none really get to the root of what appealed to me about New Mexico in the first place.
My first impressions of what New Mexico looked like came via artists. Like many people, I discovered the unique landscape and colors via the work of Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams. And though these initial views didn’t exactly call me to this place, it did shape my impression that New Mexico was nothing like the world I knew in New Jersey.
It wasn’t until a few years later, when I studied photography in college that the uniqueness and idiosyncrasies of New Mexico, and Albuquerque specifically, started to seep into my consciousness. I recall discovering the photos of Gary Winogrand, Lee Friedlander and Robert Frank. These artists each shot images here that conveys an oddness, a foreboding, a desolation unique to this place. I found these images perplexing. Not only in what they showed, but how they showed it. I have written elsewhere about Winogrand’s photo of an infant at the edge of the world, but there is also Robert Frank’s image of the desolate view of a lonely car on a distant highway, or his photo taken in a clandestine manner in a bar in Gallup. There is Friedlander’s image shot in downtown Albuquerque: a mishmash of poles, street lights, the Doghouse hot dog stand, and the wonderful dog itself. Toto, we’re not in New Jersey anymore.
The more I learned of Albuquerque, the more enigmatic it became. That dark wizard, Joel Peter-Witkin, creating his jarring work in a South Valley studio. Is this place the freak scene he alludes to? “Who walks these streets after the sun goes down?” I wondered. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.
The images of Thomas Barrow, in his series “Cancellations” also held my attention. Of course, one might wonder why anyone would damage their own negatives in the way he was doing. What did it mean to cancel out a photo you took yourself, but still decided to print and display? But what I found more intriguing were the subjects of the photos themselves. Anyone who has spent even a short amount of time in Albuquerque would start to recognize Barrow’s locations, such as the big arrow at the corner of Carlisle and Indian School. As scan of his book would yield fodder for quite the scavenger hunt for a curious Burqueño.
There are also the photographs of Danny Lyon. His book “Pictures From The New World” had a profound influence on my perception of the New Mexico landscape, the light and cultural fabric of this place. The NYC born and bred photographer somehow ended up in Bernalillo, New Mexico… a refugee from the pressures of the relentlessness of urban life, I would guess. I would follow that same path in the early 90s, and here I remain.
There are others, as well. Miguel Gandert, Robert D'Alessandro, Douglas Kent Hall and Patrick Nagatani, for example. As a group, all of these photographers did more to introduce me to the complexity and confounding nature of life in the 505 than any visitor’s guide ever could.
2019: 45 (Breathing Lessons)
To frequent readers of this blog, it will come as no surprise that I have a deep fondness for the Rio Grande bosque that cuts through the middle of Albuquerque; a ribbon of life in the middle of the dry desert. It seems whenever I need space to clear my head, a wander through the bosque usually does the trick. In recent years, I’ve focused my cameras on that environment, and it has provided an endless amount of inspiration and creative fulfillment. So much so that I am undertaking a new long-term project, returning to the bosque once a month to document the changes of the seasons, across the span of a year.
What the visits to the bosque also do for me is to allow me to let go, and deeply exhale. Not only in the literal sense, but also in a spiritual way. Recently I’ve been working hard to reconnect with myself; with my body and with my mind. Realizing that life depends on breathing, I’ve been using the focus on my breath to be the foundation for a renewed sense of mindfulness. Frequent yoga has been helping as well. These things are my attempt to stay grounded. I am grateful for each breath I can take, as well as for every visit I can make to the bosque.
2019: 42 (Back To The Bosque)
Going to the bosque of the Rio Grande here in Albuquerque never fails to inspire me. It also slows me down, allows me to decompress, and get out of my own head for a while. A recent jaunt with my new half-frame camera ignited thoughts of a new project… ideas are percolating. One day, 72 exposures, a lot less thinking, a lot more shooting. More to come.
2019: 31 (Grateful)
There’s a quote by Kurt Vonnegut that I try to keep in mind… “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” It’s a reminder that we all need to stop and recognize the sweet things in life, right in the moment. There is much pain and sadness in life, and in the world right now, so I am even more aware of savoring the good things that come to me. Yesterday was one of those times for me. After two years of working on a collaborative project, the fruits of our labor were finally shared with the world. “The River, The Ocean, The Sea” exhibition is now on view at the Open Space Visitor’s Center in Albuquerque, NM, until September 29th. Below are some great photos of the opening by my photo pal, Dan Shaffer.
I am particularly grateful for the support of my friends through this entire project. Many people stepped up to contribute to the GoFundMe campaign, and that financial support helped offset the cost of printing and framing the exhibition. I was beyond thrilled to see so many of these same folks show up at the opening yesterday, along with many other people who spent time viewing the work. I am so, so grateful for such wonderful friends in my life. Thank you all.
Also, thank you to the great staff at the Open Space Gallery for giving me a venue to share the work. Thank you to KRQE for doing a nice story about the show on their broadcast yesterday.
Thank you to Clarke Conde and the Weekly Alibi for putting me on their front cover and running a wonderful interview. Thank you especially to my collaborators Fabio Miguel Roque and Hean Kuan Ong for sharing your vision with me. I am so proud of what we accomplished together.
“If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
2019: 28 (Take Me To The River)
Here we go, formal announcement time. I am super stoked to finally announce the big exhibition of my collaboration with fellow Latent Image Collective members Fábio Miguel Roque and Hean Kuan Ong. I hope all local New Mexico readers can join me at the opening reception on Saturday, August 3rd, from 2 to 4pm.
The exhibition is at the Open Space Visitor Center Gallery on the westside of Albuquerque. The show will feature 90 photographs, and we’re planning a unique display approach to bring the images to life. I hope you can join me at the opening! More info as the date gets close.