Immel + Immel: Our New Mexico

Wagon Ruts, Cline's Corner, NM

Pecan Grove #1, Mesilla, NM

Out of the shadows, Las Vegas, NM

In less than two weeks on September 2 Immel + Immel: Our New Mexico will open at Wilder Nightingale Fine Art in Taos. My part, the photographs, include images that have never been shown in print form or in a gallery setting. You have seen some of them in my blog, however.

Above are three from the show.

Lenny Leaving

Homage to Lenny

Lenny Foster has left the building. Arguably Taos’ most successful photographer pulled up stakes last January and took his show to Saint Augustine, Florida. I'd joke he's looking for the fountain of youth but he doesn't need no stinking fountain. 

On Saturday, August 5 he returned to our arid environs for curtain call and a one-year retrospective he called “El Año Pasado” held at Magpie in the Overland Sheepskin Complex. As you would expect, the joint was rocking with friends and collectors hoping for a second chance to say goodbye to the last celebrity artist since R.C. Gorman left the planet. Good luck with your futile attempts to get face-time with the man of the hour. Dude was a freaking rock star.

Local photographers have mused about Lenny’s contribution to our little community and to our image as a place to find, dare I say buy, good photography. Lenny had become the face of Taos photography over his 23 years here; all respect to Geraint Smith, Bill Davis, Zoe Zimmerman and a host of able shooters.

One friend, the noted photogravure practitioner, Cris Pulos, went so far as to wonder if Lenny’s departure signaled the end of the photography era in Taos. My not entirely tongue in cheek response was, “No, because there’s never been a photography era here.” This a painter’s town, chico. He’ll be missed as will his beautifully curated and hung gallery near the corner of Main and Main. It’s a simple as that. And we are left with a blight of an operation in his old space; one that is an affront to our artistic sensibilities. We are not pleased.

Up top you’ll see my entirely derivative riff on Lenny’s “Healing Hands” series; the one that put him on the map. Those are Lenny’s two fingers holding his brown fedora with five dreadlocks hanging into the frame. He's wearing Ryan Michaels if you must know. He 's nearly as well known for his threads and dreads as his thoughtfully composed, spiritual confections. 

Poignant image, no?

And, finally, this image and a dozen or so others along with a similar number of Peggy Immel's paintings will be seen at the "Immel + Immel: Our New Mexico" show that opens Saturday, September 2 at Wilder Nightingale. See you there.

Give it to me one more time, and I do mean one

Epic sky above the plains near Miami, New Mexico

By 9pm on Sundays I usually have a clue about what I’m going to post. Most weeks I've been picking at the thing for days and have put it to bed. This edition, though, I'm grasping for the straws of inspiration. I’m also struggling with the absurd concept of “less is more” usually attributed minimalist architect Mies van der Rohe but, in fact, drawn from Robert Browning’s poem “Andrea de Sarto.”

Some have lamented that I will always post nine images when one would do the job quite nicely. Thank you for that input. If I want your opinion, I’ll beat it out of you.

Still on the slim chance there's something to it here’s a one and done.

Westward Ho Moments

Emanuel LeFevre or so he says

The man from Rolla

Last Saturday we took a jaunt to Rayado, New Mexico where we had learned there was a Kit Carson Museum. Though we have our own Kit Museum here in Taos, the open road called and we headed east on US 64, through Angel Fire, Eagle Nest and Cimarron Canyon to tiny Rayado. Do we have names.

Rayado and the museum reside on the monumental EX UU Bar Ranch and are part of Philmont Scout Ranch about which I dreamed in the early and mid-fifties.

At Rayado we found the appropriately named Rayado Trading Post which does double duty as the Kit Carson Museum and is manned by college age reenactors playing frontiersmen and offering tours of the old post. Among them were two young men: one hailing from Saint Joseph’s College in Brooklyn Heights, Nuevo York and the other from Springfield, Missouri. The former, clearly a method actor, called himself Emanuel LeFevre, who came west from Quebec or Saint Louis. Contestant number two, an Eagle Scout, was a student at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Missouri. That's him with his trained chicken Rosita below.

Intimate Details

There was an Aztec ceremony or velación at famed Ranchos Church a week ago Saturday. Steve Bundy, John Farnsworth and I photographed the spectacle in all its colorful glory and yet again I default to toned black and white. Which is not to say that Kodachrome moments won't follow in due course. 

As the pageantry wound down this intimate exchange emerged. As best I can figure these participants are experiencing a cleansing practice called limpia using prayer sticks made of fresh flowers. I found their warm engagement to be brimming with kinship and goodwill, commodities in rare supply these days. And I find hand kissing to be largely missing in public discourse. 

Not so fast smarty pants

Last week I offered faces in the crowd and pledged more action shots from small town rodeos in New Mexico. After reviewing shots from the Taos Sheriff’s Posse Rodeo I've learned that I have a lot to learn about stopping the action.

So instead, here’s more from the Jacob Mastic Memorial Rodeo in suburban Santa Fe. A good friend in California lamented that she had always struggled photographing her son’s high school football games to which I responded, “I’ve got that wired. Not a problem for me.” Sorry Kathy, that is very much not the case. Mea culpa.

Then another friend, the wonderful photographer Terry Thompson, said that has found color effective in portraying the frantic action of dusty cowpokes at work. Here's one:

This is from the Taos Rodeo. It almost works.

Rodeo Folk

Twice in the last month I’ve photographed rodeos. There’s so much action that it’s a third career just selecting the best sequences of saddle bronc riding, bull riding and the ever popular bulldogging. Then there are the faces of rodeo participants and spectators to which I am drawn.

Because selecting the best action shots is so daunting I’m offering more folks in the crowd today. This despite my pledge last week to share snorting bulls and horses in mid-buck.

These, by the way, are from the 50th annual Taos Sheriffs Posse Rodeo held June 24 and 25.