Down the Road Tested

Climbing guide and sailor Alain Comeau at Schartner's Farm.

Renaissance man John Snyder at Schartner's the same day.

As to Still Lifes, my early efforts in the digital age skewed to those and to portraits. I called the still life category Alignment because I believed that the core of what I was doing was composition or as I prefer design. I even said so in my artist statement in my website as early as 2002. The importance of design or framing is true of headshots, too. And that framing is done entirely in the viewfinder. That's a discipline I've lived by for six decades. Another is to shoot at f5.6 about ten inches from the subject. Only the face is in focus as seen here.

The title Monumental Heads is one Edward Weston gave to his portraits of notable members of the ex-pat community in Mexico in 1920s. Those were heady times when one’s coterie included Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Weston's partner Tina Modotti and Leon Trotsky among others. 

Today the words led me to my subject. I fully intended to continue with Still Lifes (Alignment) but once I typed the words Monumental Heads I was propelled in that direction.

A pensive John Snyder.

An equally thoughtful Comeau.

Weston is said to have believed that a featureless sky was the world’s best light for a Monumental Head. So, I marched John and Alain into the strawberry fields at Schartner’s Farm in North Conway, New Hampshire to riff on Weston’s contention. I couldn't have chosen more willing and charismatic characters for that first foray with man beneath the sky. Both of these guys loved the camera and the camera loved them. The camera in question was the $7,700 Canon1Ds I'd just bought and the images are courtesy of my beginning Photoshop class at North Conway High in 2002. 

This post qualifies for the Road Tested category by the narrowest of margins. Schartner's Farm was half a mile south on Westside Road from our cabin in the woods. A road's is a road.  

Road Tested : Close Ups

Found Art, Rinconada, NM.

In Road Tested the article that will be featured in the upcoming issue of Shadow and Light magazine I ask the question “Can a still life or an environmental portrait be part of a show titled Roadside Attractions?” I contend, “Yes.” As the dueling titles suggest, there’s considerable overlap between the show and the article. There wouldn't have been any of these images without a vehicle, petrol and wanderlust. And although the show and the article will be weighted toward the traditional landscape and especially the landscape of New Mexico  intimate landscapes will be included, as well.

In the vein of tighter shots and still lifes are four that could be part of the show, at least the two from the Land of Enchantment.

Found Art up top was taken on a counter-clockwise drive from Taos to Dixon, Peñasco, Placita and back to Taos on the High Road. In Rinconada I spied a scruffy corrugated building that claimed to be a gallery. It was chock full of car parts assembled and welded into artworks. The south facing wall was plywood painted flat white. On the wall was a bedspring tacked to the plywood with obvious artistic intent. The simplicity spoke to me. Later, the photograph was featured in Black and White Magazine’s Single Image issue. That led to the sale of a 24”x30” framed print to a professor at Butler University in Indianapolis. And Found Art launched a portfolio of the same name. All four of these images are part of that portfolio.

Butternut Squash, Fryeburg, Maine.

Driving home to North Conway, New Hampshire from the Fryeburg Fair in Maine we stopped at farm stand selling pumpkins and all manner of squash. It was raining lightly so the Butternut Squash in this image glistened in the soft light. It remains one of my favorite photographs of the last 20 years. Might even be a classic.

Faded Roses, Bethlehem, New Hampshire.

West of North Conway my friend John Snyder and I photographed in the quintessential New England town of Bethlehem, New Hampshire. Bethlehem is the home of a robust Orthodox Jewish population and several synagogues. John and I were photographing a clutch of abandoned dwellings on the north side of US 302 when we saw fabric roses behind a window. In the low light the roses disappeared into the dark background as had the Butternut Squash.

Turn Signal, El Prado, NM

In El Prado just north of Taos is a shopping and dining complex that boasts a terrific view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Abandoned vehicles have been artfully placed around the grassy property. I know one Santa Fe photographer who launched her career with images of the relics. Turn Signal is my take on a weathered Dodge grill.

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Road Tested Again

White Mesa with Walking Rain. Teec Nos Pos, Arizona.

Approaching Teec Nos Pos on the Navajo Nation I looked northwest and was rivetted by a glowing white mesa and shards of walking rain. Three images of the magic light stood out. One emphasized the mesa. Another favored the walking rain. One gave them equal billing. Here is White Mesa with Walking Rain.

Frontier Drive In. Center, Colorado.

Sangre View. Center, Colorado.

On one of many visits to the vast San Luis Valley over the years I drove to the village of Center, Colorado. The impetus was a photograph of the Frontier Drive-In that I’d seen in a Denver Post years before. I Googled it and found it was nearby.  So, I drove north from Alamosa on Highway 17. The short drive to Center rewarded me with two great subjects. First, the drive-in was an iconic and charged subject for a kid of the Fifties. The birth of rock and roll, Molly Potter, and drag racing on 56^th Street between Tempe and Phoenix are memories as vivid as Technicolor. The bonus of the visit to Center was a graveyard of trailers that glistening against the snowcapped Sangre de Cristos beyond.

Presbyterian Church. Taiban, New Mexico.

As to Presbyterian Church, Taiban, New Mexico,  a decade ago as I drove east on US 60 the sky was monumental above the plains of eastern New Mexico. Standing tall beneath the sky was the proud clapboard church, circa 1908. This is from 2017. As pleased as I am by my efforts eight years ago, I crave a reshoot especially of the graffiti inside. After all Edward Weston photographed Point Lobos hundreds of times as has my Carmel friend, Rupert Chambers, who shoots Point Lobos, Big Sur and environs every day of his life. He never tires of his slice of paradise. Who am I not to follow in their footsteps. Familiarity breeds, I contend, not contempt but intimate knowledge of a place, its moods, its light and points of view at all times of day and in all manner of weather. That’s the intimacy I feel for El Norte and the desert Southwest.

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Road Tested

The great dunes under a monumental sky.

Last week's post offered images from a recent visit to the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado. The SLV is the largest alpine valley in the world at 60 miles wide by 120 miles long. It’s a behemoth that’s lightly populated and a person could wander its backroads for a lifetime. 

Shadows and Light.

To simplify.

Swoosh.

Today and perhaps for several editions are a clutch of Roadside Attractions that are contenders for our upcoming show by that name and for my May-June article in Shadow and Light. Selecting 10 images out of 100s is always a daunting task. I both relish and hate the process. Looking back I often discover a image I missed back in the day. I like that part of the drill. Moving forward its about identifying something special in a subject or a scene. We're searching for another dimension that separates this image from the ordinary. Today's post relates to the theme of our upcoming show and to the article in that the photographs were made on the road to or from somewhere. Among the 10 or so images in the article will be gems from the archives and more recent efforts. In the ideal world the selections for the article and for the show would be weighted toward the new and favor New Mexico. But, ultimately, it's he best 10,15 or 25 that are true to the theme.

The image curation task and our tour of the San Luis Valley a week ago yesterday led me to the Great Sand Dunes National Park, the wonder within the great valley. It is breathtaking. Above are four images from that magnificent place.

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Roads Revisited

This little number comes to you courtesy of our upcoming summer show and a possible article for Shadow and Light. It’s rare when I can vanquish two birds with one theme. That theme is Roadside Attractions, the working title of our sixth biannual show at our Taos Gallery, Wilder Nightingale. So, here’s your first notice of the show which will open on Saturday, August 30. Consider yourself warned.

"We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto."

The theme, Roadside Attractions, comes from Peggy’s fertile brain. Though I have had reservations about the title and have wondered if it's too restrictive, I’ve embraced it more or less. Can a still life be a roadside attraction?  On the other hand, most of my photographs and Peggy’s paintings have been inspired by short jaunts or meandering journeys into the southwestern landscape. So, that part works.

A sliver of color in the high desert,

New road trips are part of the plan and in the past week we returned to the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado. So, on our week ago yesterday excursion we revisited old friends like the Great Sand Dunes National Park and an abandoned farmhouse in Mosca, Colorado. A dozen years ago I photographed the lonely dwelling which looked to me more like the Midwest than Southwest. So, I called the photograph “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.” I’ve been processing the new ones of the farmstead and either the original will be in the show or one of the new ones if it’s better. Both of these are 2025 iterations.

Abandonado, Costilla, NM.

Just south of the Colorado border on the way to the San Luis Valley we explored the town of Costilla. West of the downtown, I use the term loosely, on the west side of NM 522 we found an entire village of abandoned buildings. It’s as if Costilla once thrived then died. One of the photographs of the abandoned buildings shown above is a work in process but I'm getting there.

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King Copper

The Ray Mine with Teapot Dome in the distance.

In an Instagram post a couple of weeks back I referred to a side trip to the threadbare copper mining town of Winkelman, Arizona. We were driving back from the California coast and planned to avoid Interstates where possible and to use so-called Blue Highways from Apache Junction, Arizona to I-40 in Grants, New Mexico. We had in mind driving northeast from Apache Junction on US 60 through the copper mining towns of Superior, Miami and Globe then through the White Mountains and plains of northeast Arizona into New Mexico at Quemado. From Quemado we’d traverse more grasslands before entering El Malpais National Monument and the junction of I-40.

Betwixt and Between

It was a daunting 12-hour haul from Arizona’s Copper Country to Taos in one long day. In the lead-up to the turn northeast Peggy expressed interest in visiting the less known copper mining town of Winkelman where her grandfather once lived and where she believed her uncle George was born. I told her, “We absolutely have to do that.” The math suggests that her grandfather would have arrived in Winkelman around the turn of the twentieth century and that her uncle would have been born there in 1920 give or take, 

Winkelman, AZ

A shell of its former self

Fate made that a necessity. As we approached Superior, population 2.407, we saw signs saying that US 60 was closed from Superior to Miami and Globe and that we’d have to take a detour through Winkelman and back to US 60 in Globe. We had no idea whether Winkelman still existed or that copper mining was alive and well. Perhaps 15 miles south on AZ 177 we caught our first glance of the sprawling Ray Mine in Hayden, AZ. It is still functioning and now Mexican owned. I photographed the mine which stretched from north of Hayden and into Winkelman with its smelter on a shallow rise above the village of 353. The town was founded when the former Kennecott Copper Mine was built in 1881. The town’s bones are of that era and there has been little new construction since. Gotta love it. In another IG post I wrote that I could spend a week in what’s left of the once bustling burg. One of my favorite portfolios, dare I say an important one, is The Edge of What’s Left. Winkelman is what's left. I am and will always be drawn to the decaying and forgotten.

It should be noted that the Ray Mine encompasses 59,000 acres and is the second largest producer of copper in Arizona, a state that produces 65% of America’s copper.

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Those cotton fields back home

The Palms Inn still standing tall.

Back in 1965 I was a cotton inspector for the state of Arizona. In no way was I qualified to inspect cotton but my college roommate at Arizona State University, Cal Z. Miller, was an entomology student. He studied bugs, Cal was going to be a cotton inspector in the hell hole of Gila Bend that summer and he recommended me to join him. It was the best paying job a college student could get in the mid-Sixties. $1.50 an hour was the going wage for a bartender or men’s wear salesman. I was both as well as others like a truck driver, bank teller, a PR flack and a singing waiter. As cotton inspectors we’d be making $275 a week. A bank trainee straight out of college earned about that. We were in high cotton if you'll excuse the pun.

So, I interviewed with Cal’s supervisor at the state Capitol in Phoenix, couldn’t spell the weevil in boll weevil, and still got the job.

Palms at the Palms

The legendary pool at the Palms.

Learning to be a cotton inspector had a short and shallow learning curve, right up my short and shallow alley. You opened the cotton boll, looked for the tiny insects, did that a hundred times and your day was done. As I recall it, we walked twenty steps into a row of cotton, picked a plant, inspected it and moved on to the next row. It was easy if blisteringly hot work. By noon each of us had tested the obligatory 100 plants. We worked five or six hours a day, five days a week for our $275. We found no weevils. Ever.

Throughout the summer of '65 we drove 70 miles from Tempe to Gila Bend every Sunday night, checked into the Palms Inn, still there and better than ever as the photographs above attest. I’ve punched the saturation to cast a mid-century vibe. We returned to our apartment at the Lone Palm in Tempe every Friday afternoon, and repaired to the pool beer in hand. It's been said that college mates say they never saw me without a beer after 5pm. We held beer chugging contests from time to time. The contestant stood in the bath tub, it's wet business, beer can in hand and waited for the go signal.  Two stop watches timed his effort. Jack Francis amazed with a world record of .9 seconds. I did 1.2. Yes, sports fans, that's faster than you can pour a beer down the drain. As if anyone would do that

When I call Gila Bend a hell hole I am not embellishing. The town was often the hottest in the country vying for that recognition with Presidio, Texas and Death Valley. To survive we were in the fields by 6am and back at our motel by noon every day.

Our routine was to work in the morning, have lunch in our swamp cooled room, take a nap, lift weights, hang out by the pool, shower, read a good book and walk to Frankie’s Bar for a steak and several bottles of Budweiser, the King of Beers. It was the same every day. Then and now I relish routine and ritual. On Fridays we were back by the pool at the Lone Palm in Tempe by mid-afternoon. It was a simple, unchallenging life. By the end of the summer of 1965 Cal and I were bronzed gods and rolling in dough.

In the spring of 1966 Cal graduated from ASU and became a health inspector in LA. I graduated a year later after eight off and on years. He visited us in Van Nuys a couple of times after Peggy and I moved to The Valley in 1968, Then we lost touch.

All of this is prompted by our drive to southern California in mid-March. In our two-day trip to the coast we stayed in Tucson for one night and took the low road to Borrego Springs through Gila Bend. We were not impressed by the backwater. It is a pit. Whereas most towns from my long ago and misspent youth in Arizona had flourished, Gila Bend had shriveled. It was less than I remembered and that’s saying something.

Of the icons of the summer of 1965 in the no stoplight Gila Bend the Palms Inn still there and was crisp, beautifully maintained and much better than it was when I was 23. Sadly, Frankie’s is no longer. If, indeed, that was it's name. I don't have a clue but Frankie's feels right. The building that once housed the dive bar was gone. I considered making the shuttered bar across Main Street from the Palms as Frankie’s but Peggy’s disdain for small fictions dissuaded me.

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