Mormon Row

The Tetons sure are grand but in overwhelming way.  Then there’s the knotty problem of getting a shot that’s not a hackneyed piece of eye candy.  Add my penchant for pasture and prairie and you get photographs that don’t include the jagged teeth of Mount Moran, Teewinot and Middle Grand at all.  They're behind me for what it's worth.

Anyway a couple miles north of Moose Junction and a hard right onto Antelope Flats Road takes you to the remains of an 1890’s settlement once called Grovont and now dubbed Mormon Row for Mormon families from Idaho who settled the lush alluvial plain beneath the Tetons.  A mile long stretch of cabins, barns and corrals stretches north to south along a well tended dirt road.  Once there were six family homesteads on Mormon Row replete with a community ditch system, a granary, a post office, a church and a swimming hole.  Apparently the community existed till the 1950s and I have found no explanation for its demise.  I do know that the National Parks Service intended to raise the complex until a group of right minded citizens saw a nugget of history worth preserving.

Pow Wow Portrait

The annual Taos Pow Wow happened a couple of weeks back.  It's a splashy affair with beating drums, frenzied dances and exotic regalia.  I don't know this young brave's tribe but the Zia symbol on his forehead indicates he's from one of northern New Mexico's nineteen pueblos.

Picture Perfect

Here the complete ensemble poses on the mantle of a fireplace in an old adobe in Bernalillo.

Short Subjects

I'm road whipped. Too many miles in too few hours. Amber's lovely legs will have to do tonight.

On the Waterfront

I’m pleased to be included in the exhibition Color at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition in, well, Brooklyn, NY.  BWAC says that Conservatoire des Ocres #1 is one of 118 pieces of art to be selected out of 1,224 submissions in all mediums.  The image is 14"x21" on 24"x30" paper.

The show opens July 28 and runs through August 23 at BWAC’s gallery in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn so if you’re in New York (and I wish I could be) take a gander.  

Red Hook, a gritty neighborhood of South Brooklyn, was the setting for 1954's On the Waterfront, is where the Queen Mary II now docks and has been dubbed "resindustrial" for its robust mix of lofts, galleries and industry.  That'll be on the quiz.

285

Early last week Jordi Baizan, a musician based in Houston, called about using a couple of my images for the jacket of his band's upcoming CD entitled “285.”  When I asked how he found the photographs he said that he had Googled "US 285" and found my work.  Above is one of them. 

Then a design firm in Vancouver emailed about an image called "Wagon Rut."  The agency's owner said she had Googled for images of, well, Wagon Ruts and after drilling very deep came up with the one below which, get this, was taken on US 285.  You can't make this stuff up.

Turns out that I have a substantial portfolio of photographs taken along 285’s diagonal path from Texas to Colorado.  Could this be the theme of a show or book?

Next week more postcards from 285 or not. 

King Copper

Natural State

Freeport-McMoran’s open pit copper mine in Morenci, Arizona is the largest in North America and one of the largest in the world.  The monster mine produces 650,000 tons a day of copper.  I tried to visualize its immensity and decided I’d have to see it for myself.  So I took the long way back to Taos from Tucson for the grand unveiling.  I was blown away. 

According to Google Maps the mine is the about the size of Manhattan; a slash in the earth that is a mile deep and measures eight miles north to south and four miles across at its widest point.  That’s 32 square miles sports fans.  It’s a Seven Wonders of the World phenomenon employing thousands of workers and using high rise earth movers that look like insects across the great pit.  The tires alone dwarf a human being.  The tops of mountains have been excavated to reveal brown earth rich with copper and gold.  Terraced amphitheaters laced with roads are dug, the dirt sifted and separated for its precious bounty. 

The Morenci of today is actually a new town built to house miners displaced by the ever expanding mine.  The company owns the whole shebang including workers houses that adorn an earthen cirque.

More to come  There's one hell of a story here.

Magic Light

Monhegan Island is a rocky speck 12 miles off the Maine coast.  It measures just 1.75 miles long and .75 mile across.  There are no automobiles allowed.  You can't even bring a bicycle. 

While the island’s 75 full time residents are lobstermen, Monhegan is most famous as an art colony; one that became prominent in the 1890s and remains so today.  Like northern New Mexico, Monhegan boasts magic light that has inspired generations of artists including Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent and Jamie Wyeth. 

The island’s lighthouse sits at the height of land. I photographed it as the sun disappeared beneath the horizon behind me.  The white clapboards of the adjacent buildings seem to glow against the darkening sky.

Is that All There Was?

When I chanced upon the remains of the town of Rice in California's Mojave Desert it felt like the most desolate place on earth.  What compelled Standard Oil to build a service station where there are no humans on the way to absolutely nowhere is baffling.  The crumbling mid-century station which once was Rice seems to be evidence of that folly.  Yet here, as in New Mexico and Arizona, the Santa Fe Railroad gave rise to dozens of sidings and tiny settlements built to support it.  Some persist.  Some, like Rice, do not.

To get to this garden spot head east from Twenty Nine Palms on Highway 62 heading to Parker, Arizona. I do not recommend July.

Land Grant Country

Even the smallest settlements in northern New Mexico boast a Catholic church.  Shown here are the adobe churches in Golondrinas and Watrous.  Services are offered every few weeks when a circuit riding priest passes through.  This is Spanish land grant country where nearly everybody descends from the Conquistadors and Los Archuletas, Medinas, Gallegos, Torres and Cordovas seem to populate every community.

Golondrinas

Stock Pond

Not far from Watrous grasslands roll toward the Sangre de Cristos and the land heaves up to 13,000 feet at its highest point.   State Road 161 winds through fertile pasture land past alpine lakes and tiny villages before joining Highway 518 and its abrupt ascent near Holman.    

Watrous

Highway 161 Westbound

I'm having blogger software problems folks so the images and copy are not in the order intended.  Gave it four tries and gave up.

Tres Cruces

Though San Francis de Asis in Ranchos de Taos is vastly more famous, San Jose de Gracia in Las Trampas stacks right up in curb appeal.  The rustic cross and brooding sky give weight to the church's importance as the central spiritual and social institution in rural New Mexico Hispanic communities such as Las Trampas.

Last Frontier

The Frontier Drive-In went dark at least a decade ago.  It’s a poignant monument to the halcyon days of tiny Center, Colorado and recalls sock hops, circle pins and getting to second base with Mary Lou in a chopped and channeled deuce coupe.  The partially hidden sedan gives me a giggle. You're hiding from exactly what?

Dry Land Farming

Sleepy Sudan Texas sits astride US 84 between Lubbock and the New Mexico border.  Sleepy is the operative word on a somnolent March morning.   You know it’s a backwater when the nearest city is called Muleshoe.  Gotta love that moniker.  The towering grain elevators that dominate the town are dormant.   A solitary pick-up creeps along Main Street in a scene right out of Bogdonovitch’s The Last Picture Show.  That film was made in 1971.  In Sudan it still is.

In 1892 the owners of the 77 ranch granted Lamb County the site for a town.  The town’s first postmaster P.F. Boesen named it Sudan for reasons lost in history.   The dusty burg limped along with a population of six lonely souls until in 1913 the Santa Fe Railroad built a spur through Sudan on the way from Lubbock to Clovis.  There soon followed a hotel, a cotton gin and grain elevators and by 1925 several hundred farmers, pickers and ranchers had settled in Sudan. 

A scant 14 inches of rain evaporates on the South Plains of West Texas where Sudan persists.  Rarer still is a frosty brew or icy high ball on a blazing summer afternoon.  Most of Texas’s 40 dry counties lie in this parched patch of nowhere.  It’s the nightmare version of the American Dream; a thirsty Bible Belt of cotton, oil and cattle.

And did you know that Lubbock, a city of 250,000 an hour away and the home of Texas Tech University was dry until May of 2009?  Matriculation without lubrication.  Jeez.

Field Studies

Beyond doubt the Sonoran Desert is my favorite of the four North American deserts.  It's the desert we identify with the towering Saguaro cactus and which also hosts the Cholla, the Prickly Pear and other succulents like agave.  Because it receives twice the rainfall of the Mohave, Chihuahuan and Great Basin Deserts the cacti of the Sonoran Desert come alive with flowers in May and June.  This amazing desert covers much of central and southern Arizona and a thin swath of southern California. It's best accessed from Tucson which is bracketed by Saguaro National Parks on its eastern and western borders.

The Saguaros themselves are immense, they can reach fifty feet, but are also humorous and oddly animate like creatures from a James Cameron movie.  Here I’ve included some portraits of these otherworldly characters.

Head Shots

Two Fridays ago photographer Daryl Black and I scoured Santa Fe for new looks at The City Different.  No mean trick.  On museum hill we played with shadows cast by elaborate portals and arbors.  Daryl said the patterns of light and shadow seemed almost Mayan to her.

After lattes at the Garcia Street Bookstore we crossed town to the railyard for trains, a personal fave, and industrial buildings that have been converted into galleries and studios.  After a fruitless effort with the engines and  carriages, I speak for myself, we wandered down the tracks for some grittier inspiration.  There we found a warehouse with graffiti covered walls and outsized portraits.  Daryl caught me snapping one of the behemoth heads.  

Ranch View Motel and Burger Emporium

Is it just me or is it hungry out?  Giant Burgers you say.  Truth be told, the advertised mongo burger was a run of the mill 1/3 pound number, the one folks get to call big, bigger or gigundo.   But, you ask, “Isn’t this image about an eatery in middle of nowhere New Mexico, a throwback to a kinder, gentler time in rural 1950’s America?”

Ruffles Have Ridges

These are for Thea Swengel who shares my fascination with corrugated buildings.  Both images are from the Chama yard of the Cumbres and Toltec Railroad.  I don’t know where the appeal lies but I’d guess it's the linear repetition and the things that happen when shadows interact with the dead straight verticals.  Or maybe I have no idea whatsoever.

The Same Thing Only Different

Yesterday while hiking and photographing at Georgia O'Keefe's beloved Ghost Ranch I had the realization that each time I visit a familiar site I see it anew.  I see new things and I frame the same subjects in new ways.  That's why a photographer might return to Point Lobos dozens or scores of times and still find it fresh.

So it is with these two images of white windows on a richly textured old adobe.  They were taken several years apart and are very different takes on a tried and true subject. 

Vielle Ferme

The last two years I’ve been awarded First Place for photography at the Museum of the Southwest’s spring juried exhibition.  I’m honored by the recognition and thankful for the Midland Arts Association’s stewardship of the show.  The museum, as I said last year, is a jewel of a place and a must see if you’re in West Texas.  The show runs through April 29. 

Each year I’m surprised by the bounty of wonderful art at the museum.  Showing along with the spring juried show last year was the Plein Air Painters of America’s National Parks exhibition and this year the museum features 100 Years of Photographs of the Grand Canyon.  There’s also a gallery devoted to Taos Masters.  So there’s a lot to see in beautiful downtown Midland.

Vielle Ferme is the winning photograph which comes from our September in Provence.   The meticulously tilled old farm had been in cultivation since middle ages and the rugged stone building for nearly as long.  Only its metal door and cinder block reinforcements betray modernity.  An epic sky completes the ensemble.  Ain’t life grand?

In January the color iteration of Vielle Ferme was on display, and sold most quickly, at the Millicent Rogers Museum’s miniatures show.  This is the rare image that seems to work as well in color as black and white.  As a mostly black and white shooter I lean to monochrome.  Here not so much.  What do you think?

For awhile now I’ve been flirting with the idea of offering specific images at especially attractive prices for that week (the day of the post through the following Sunday).   You receive a signed, editioned 8x12 inch archival pigment print on 13x19 inch Moab Entrada paper for $150.  This is normally $225.  Vielle Ferme is available in color or black and white, a comparitive rarity.

If interested, email me a steve@steveimmelphotography.com.  Thanks all.

The Name of the Rose

A tattooed waif both voluptuous and vulnerable, Rose strode across the courtyard into open shade beneath the portal. Her eyes spoke plaintively and in muted tones.

Fading Roses

Lest I get caught up in an unending flurry of historical vignettes, it’s time for a straight black and white “art” photograph that recalls why I make pictures in the first place.  Just because the subject is worth rendering artfully (hopefully.)

Mission On Two Rivers

Continuing our theme of Spanish colonial missions in New Mexico these are images of the magnificent La Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles de Porciuncula de Los Pecos mission at the Pecos Pueblo just east of Santa Fe. Brevity was not a distinguishing trait of our Spanish brethren.

The Cicuye people arrived in a valley rimmed by snow capped peaks at the confluence of the Pecos and Glorieta Rivers .  There they built two dozen mud and stone villages in the early 1100s.  By 1450 over 2,000 people lived in a five story high complex.  A vibrant economy developed as the Cicuye brokered a robust trade between the Indians of the Rio Grande and those of the buffalo plains to the east.

Pursuing a so-called vision quest in 1540, the conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado discovered the Cicuye Pueblo later named Pecos.  Unlike the Zuni whom he fought and vanquished the Cicuye welcomed the Spanish. Coronado was told of amazing riches to be found farther east in Kansas but found nothing but poor villages.  His Indian guide confessed that he had lured Coronado’s army to the plains to perish and he was strangled for his deceit. 

In 1598 after Don Juan Onate conquered the Pueblo tribes he assigned a friar to Pecos, the most powerful of New Mexico Pueblos.  Episodes of idol smashing and abuse bred understandable animosity until a seasoned missionary, Fray Andres Juarez, arrived from the south.  Juarez directed the construction of a monumental adobe church that was completed between 1621 and 1634.  It was the most imposing of New Mexico’s mission churches and its remains reflect that grandeur.

Still, seething resentments led to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 when the Spanish were driven from northern New Mexico.  But the victory was short lived as Spain’s Diego de Vargas conquered the pueblos again just twelve years later.

By the 1780s disease and inter-tribal warfare had reduced its population to less than 300 and the last survivors had left for the Jemez Pueblo by 1838.

Salt Missions

The Salinas basin covers about 50 miles north to south and within it are the remains of three pueblos and Spanish churches built near them from 1598.  The Spanish conquest and domination was short lived as the entire area had been depopulated by 1670.  While the reasons for this exodus are debated, it was probably due to drought, famine and attacks from the Apaches to the east. The Tehuan people of the Salinas basin spoke the Tiwa language that was also spoken at the abandoned Pecos Pueblo east of Santa Fe and continues to be spoken in the Taos and Jemez Pueblos.  It is believed that the tribes of Pecos and Salinas migrated to Jemez and Taos.

The Salinas Pueblos and Salt Missions are named for the saline lakes in desert-like terrain nearby.  Human habitation here goes back 6,000 years and as many as 10,000 Ancestral Puebloans once bartered salt with the Rio Grande Indians for cotton products, squash and beans and with plains Indians for hides, flints and buffalo meat.

The three missions, Abo, Quarai and Gran Quivara are unlike any other New Mexico missions in that they were built with small flat stones much like the pueblos of northwest New Mexico notably Chaco Canyon.  This suggests trade or migratory connections between the regions.  And we do know that the ancestral Puebloans migrated in a counter clockwise direction from central New Mexico to northern New Mexico into southern Colorado and southern Utah before dipping south into Arizona and finally Mexico.  So the premise of Chacoan style architecture starting in the Salinas Pueblos is entirely plausible.

Chaco or Abo?  You be the judge.