Ablaze with Light

If the holiday season was launched with the lighting of Ledoux Street in early December, it's culmination was the Christmas Eve extravaganza of farolitos in Velarde. For two miles leading north into the northern New Mexico village more than 2000 paper bags filled with sand and a glowing votive candle line Highway 68. Based on Las Posadas, the hispanic celebration of Mary and Joseph's search for lodging and a place for Jesus' birth, the families of Velarde have been lighting the roadway for almost thirty years.

Lighting Ledoux

The Christmas season starts in earnest with the lighting of scores of farolitos along Ledoux Street in Taos. Ledoux, one of the town's premiere gallery and museum venues is aglow with the warming light of countless paper bags filled with sand and single votive candles carefully placed to symbolize lighting the way for Mary and Joseph in their search for lodging in the days leading to the Christ Child's birth. Indeed, the ritual is known as "Las Posadas" which means literally "The Inns."

One Man Show

The new Santa Fe Camera Center located at 851 St. Michael's Drive will be hosting an exhibit of selected black and white images from Friday, August 25 through September 16, 2006. Entitled Compositions in Black and White the show will display twenty five photographs taken in the last three years in northern New Mexico and New England.

Subjects include sensuously rendered butternut squash, silvery railroad mechanicals, abstracted sand dunes and empty expanses of eastern New Mexico plains among others. The photographs exemplify characteristics of richness, luminosity, tonal range and clarity.

There will be an opening reception on Friday evening, August 25 between 5 and 7:30pm.

Special show prices will be available for the run of the show both at the gallery and through my website. www.steveimmelphotography.com

Desert Denizen

Just north of Taos, New Mexico in the village of El Prado several vintage vehicles are artfully strewn as a kind of lawn decor. Among these treasures is the front end of a Dodge pick-up truck from the late 1930's. It's grill or shield glows Darth Vader like against it's burnished red paint. It's handsome, menacing and decaying all at the same time.