HOW PHOTOGRAPHY CLICKED INTO FOCUS IN SANTA FE 

By Jason Silverman

Friends and acquaintances knew Ansel Adams as a world-class letter writer. But this articulate photographer struggled to find words to describe Northern New Mexico. Adams' correspondence, collected in a 1990 book by Mary Street Alinder, included a 1929 letter to his friends Cedric and Rhea Wright. "Lookee! Roosters! Jezuz Krize but this is a great place," he wrote. "Such MOUNTAINS!!!! Peaks are 13000 feet high. … Pines Aspins Snow Klouds Burros Swell People. … You gotta see this place before you die."

Adams, one of America's best-traveled naturalists, was not the first photographer to go giddy over New Mexico. The state has been an essential stopping-off and roosting spot for photographers for more than 150 years -- very nearly the entire history of photography. The list of greats who made pictures here includes: Edward Weston, Paul Strand and Henri Cartier-Bresson, along with pioneers such as J.K. Hillers, Timothy H. O'Sullivan, Charles Lummis and William Henry Jackson.

"The roster of photographers who have done major work in New Mexico is a microcosm of the history of photography," wrote the late Beaumont Newhall, author of the seminal  History of Photography as An Art Form, first published in 1935, and a long-time New Mexico resident himself. Collectively, these outstanding photographers have imprinted Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico on our national consciousness, and helped establish photography as an legitimate art form.

Today, with a new century and a new vision of photography unfolding, Santa Fe has emerged as a leading global center for photography. In addition to dozens of significant photographers living here, Santa Fe is also home to cutting-edge photographic institutions. The College of Santa Fe opened the Marion Center for Photographic Arts in 1997, and the school is already being described as "the Julliard of photography." The renowned Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, held year-round, draw professional and amateur photographers from around the country. The Museum of Fine Arts, SITE Santa Fe and Georgia O'Keeffe Museum exhibit photography next to paintings and three-dimensional art. Santa Fe is home to well-respected galleries like Andrew Smith Gallery, Photo-Eye, Monroe Gallery, The Darkroom, Klebau Photography, Photogenesis, August Gallery and Three Raven Fine Arts.

And there's more. The biennial Photo Arts Santa Fe celebration, the annual Review Santa Fe symposium, and steady streams of famed visitors bring new ideas to town. Sebastiao Salgado came in for an exhibit and when he left, had started designing a new documentary photography program for the Marion Center.

Add to this the region’s clear light and unforgettable landscapes -- and one can justifiably make the argument that per capita, Santa Fe has become the place to make, appreciate, and collect photographs.

According to Van Deren Coke in his book, Photography in New Mexico, our state's love affair with photography probably began around 1847, the year of the earliest surviving photograph of Taos priest, writer and activist, Padre Antonio Jose Martinez. By 1852, Santa Fe had its first photography studio, which was run by Siegmund Seligman. In the post-Civil War years, New Mexico attracted a steady flow of expeditionary photographers sent by the U.S. government to document the people, buildings and landscape of a largely uncharted territory.

The best of these photographers helped elevate field photography into an art form. The Philadelphia Photographer wrote that William Henry Jackson, who spent considerable time in this state between 1874 and 1881, took photographs that "excel anything in landscape work we have ever seen made in this country."

Photography back then was no point-and-click hobby. These pioneers humped wagonloads of supplies and equipment. A negative in those days was the same size as the finished plate; and cameras were unwieldy. Finishing a single plate could take 10 detailed steps, "hard enough to do in the studio," wrote Jackson's son, "let alone on the top of a mountain in driving gales."

Some made a show of their ruggedness. Timothy O'Sullivan traveled in a Civil War ambulance. J.K. Hillers nearly died from a scorpion bite while on a shoot. The pictures, however, were worth the trouble -- poignant, beautifully composed shots of places and peoples that seemed a universe away from America's East Coast.

Other notables who spent time in New Mexico included Ben Wittick (who did die on the job, from a snakebite at Fort Wingate) and Los Angeles Times editor Charles Lummis. Edward Sheriff Curtis made several trips to New Mexico, first in 1903 and then in the 1920s. Curtis’ portraits continue to shape our perceptions of Native Americans and remain among the most familiar of western images.

A New Century, And A New Way of Seeing

By the mid-1920s, new ways of thinking about art and imagery had spread to New Mexico, thanks largely to Mabel Dodge Luhan, who presided over a growing art colony in Taos. In the 1920s and ‘30s, Luhan hosted the likes of Georgia O'Keeffe, Mary Austin, D. H. Lawrence, Carl Jung, Elsie Clews Parsons and Martha Graham. Photographers were more than welcome to stay at her home -- at least for a while.

According to Coke in Photography in New Mexico, Ansel Adams was a guest at Luhan's hacienda in 1930 -- until she needed his room for a more famous visitor. Stuck for a place to sleep, Adams sought out Paul Strand, who took Adams in..

Strand, who made his first of several trips to New Mexico in 1926, was a legendary figure who had created the first series of abstract photographs in 1916. His works were overturning the soft-focus tendencies that defined early art photography, and he was happy to describe his theories of photography, which included making crystal-clear, sharply focused images, with Adams.

Adams listened intently, and soon retired his soft-focus lens. He also decided -- after flirting with the idea of becoming a musician -- to become a professional photographer. It was the turning point in his career.  "Taos and Santa Fe," the historian Nancy Newhall wrote, "were (Adams') Rome and his Paris." Adams created Moonrise Over Hernandez, one of the most recognizable images of the century, in 1941, and continued to photograph New Mexico until 1972.

Many other significant modernist photographers came to New Mexico, too. Edward Weston's trip was paid for with a Guggenheim Foundation Award, the first ever given to a photographer. His son Brett also made photographs in the state. Willard Van Dyke made pictures of Chimayo and Laguna Pueblo. One of Edward Knee's photographs was chosen, above paintings, drawings, murals and sculptures, to represent New Mexico in a national exhibit of Work Projects Administration (WPA) art in 1937. Photojournalism flourished in our state during the Great Depression. President Franklin Roosevelt's Farm Security Administration program was responsible for some of New Mexico's legendary images, including the famous migrant series Russell Lee shot in Pie Town, and the photos John Collier Jr. took of life in Trampas.

Laura Gilpin, described by Coke as the dean of Southwestern photographers, was one of the most multi-talented photographers ever to call Santa Fe home -- she even mastered the art of aerial photography. Gilpin remains best known for the fifteen years of photographs she took of the Navajo people. Eliot Porter, the inimitable naturalist photographer, moved to Santa Fe in 1939 and lived in New Mexico until his death in 1990. His photographs were outstanding enough to warrant two solo exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Santa Fe's stable of notable photographers continued to attract new artists to town. New Yorker David Scheinbaum came to Santa Fe with hopes of meeting his hero, the photographer and historian Beaumont Newhall, and soon became Newhall's assistant.

"Wherever you’re from, images by Timothy O'Sullivan, William Henry Jackson, J.K. Hillers, and Adam Clark Vroman were the images you studied first," Scheinbaum said. "This area is so ingrained in all photography students from everywhere. It is a place to pilgrimage to, the place that we all had in our heads from the first day. Paul Strand, Ansel Adams, Willard van Dyke and Edward Weston -- all of our forefathers have walked here, and worked here. It's sacred ground for photographers."

Photography: The New Art Form Takes Root in New Mexico

By the 1960s, photography in New Mexico had gathered enough momentum to inspire an educational infrastructure. The University of New Mexico (UNM) founded a graduate photography program within its Department of Art in 1963. It was a visionary move that quickly turned UNM into the pre-eminent photography school in the country.

"It has a track record not unlike the Bauhaus in students who have gone on as artists, curators, scholars and teachers," said Steve Yates, curator of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe. "UNM is perhaps more influential than any other institution in the history of photography."

The venerable list of students and instructors at the UNM program include Coke, Newhall, Betty Hahn, Meridel Rubinstein, Anne Noggle, Joel-Peter Witkin and Patrick Nagatani. The adventuresome spirit of the UNM program flowed north to Santa Fe. In 1969, the photo gallery F-22 opened; even as photographers like Gilpin, Porter and Todd Webb were living in town. In the mid-80s, Andrew Smith moved his gallery from Albuquerque to Santa Fe and Scheinbaum & Russek Photography was launched; both are now internationally recognized photography dealers.

In 1990, Reid Callanan left the Maine Photographic Workshops to open the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. This program soon became a success, drawing professional and advanced amateur photographers from around the country. In 2002, the school hosted nearly 1600 students for 132 week-long workshops. The organization also runs the Santa Fe Center for the Visual Arts which produces Review Santa Fe -- an annual gathering of emerging filmmakers, curators, gallery directors and photo editors.

Photo-Eye Books & Prints moved to Santa Fe from Austin in 1991. It's now considered by many to be the finest photographic bookstore in the world, and features online and in-store sales, a gallery space, and an influential newsletter.

The newest jewel in Santa Fe's photography crown is the College of Santa Fe’s Marion Center, a state-of-the-art gallery space, library, research center (Beaumont and Nancy Newhall’s entire 1700-volume collection is housed here) and fully equipped studio space for undergraduates. Scheinbaum envisioned the Center, drew up the proposal, solicited funding, and invited James Enyeart to be its first director. (Enyeart, Coke, and Newhall had been previous directors of the George Eastman House's International Museum of Photography and Moving Images in Rochester, New York.

Scheinbaum's wife and partner Janet Russek recalled that as recently as twenty years ago, Scheimbaum & Russek Photography's solo shows of Diane Arbus and Edward Weston resulted in a total of four prints sold. Photography was not yet considered ‘collectable.’

"In the early '80s, photography was at the bottom, bottom-most rung," Russek said. "There was painting, sculpture, printmaking, and then, there was photography. But photography is coming into an equal footing, especially in the contemporary art scene, and that's huge."

Photography in Santa Fe has reached a tipping point, attracting ever-increasing flows of eager collectors. This growing demand has led to recent new arrivals, including Monroe Gallery (run by two transplants from the Manhattan arts scene) and Klebau Photography, run by former photojournalist James Klebau. ok

When photographer Gregg Albracht, owner of Three Ravens Fine Art Gallery, first came to town in the early ‘80s, he took his portfolio to 90 galleries -- and found only a handful hanging photographs. “Now, it's impossible to see every photography exhibit in town. I’d guess there are several hundred photography shows in Santa Fe each year," Albracht said. "At one point last summer, you had Stieglitz at the O'Keeffe Museum, Brett Weston at the Museum of Fine Arts, and Gerald Peters Gallery showing the murals of Ansel Adams. The change from twenty years ago is extraordinary."

"So many great photographers have lived here, and passed through," said gallery owner Andrew Smith. "Photography is still a stepchild of the arts, but it is becoming more of an integral part of it. Museum curators and collectors have understood the importance of photography for some time, and now the general public is beginning to understand it too."

Shooting Into The Future: Photography In A Digital Age

Santa Fe is fortunate to have developed a strong educational infrastructure in the camera arts. Why? Because photography as we have known it for the past 100 years is facing a paradigm shift. Digital image-making is revolutionizing photography, just as it is revolutionizing the cinema and publishing industries.

"We've seen more change in the last ten years than we did in the past 100," said Callanan. "The digital workflow is taking over. The buzzword is digital. There is just no denying it. That opens up huge opportunities and possibilities, and huge challenges as well." Reid said that thirty percent of his 2003 Santa Fe Photographic Workshops explored digital techniques.

The Marion Center is meeting these challenges with state-of-the-art digital laboratories. "When I was growing up, you worked in color or in black in white; you did documentary, or you did landscape," Scheinbaum said. "The lines were very thick. But here, our students take all kinds of technology from all branches of photo history, and do what they like to do. They do it the quickest way, or with the best control they know of. It's beautiful to watch."

If new photographic methods are emerging, Santa Fe's photographers are sure to figure out spectacular

ways to use them. New Mexico, according to Steve Yates, has a remarkable track record of invention, innovation and diversity. More remarkable, according to Yates, is that despite the state's long history of great photography, no "New Mexico school" has emerged. The work here remains impossible to characterize.

"Our artists go beyond classical genres and approaches," he said. "We are unique and rich for the spectrum of visionaries and their contributions, especially compared to centers such as New York, Europe or Latin America. Much of today’s new photographic history around the globe was started here, as ideas by artists working in New Mexico."