A Thousand Mondays

Cuba and his Mauser España. Taos Plateau, New Mexico.

This is my 1,000^th post. I'm more amazed than you are. I’ve been building up to this milestone for weeks and the prospect of writing this post has highjacked my remaining brain cells since April. That's when I realized I was on the brink of this monument to tenacity and habit. I’ve looked back at the arc of my blog since its baby steps in 2006. In those fledgling days I offered a single photograph and a few lines of text. It wasn’t until 2009 that I posted every week, and the posts became longer and more story driven. Certainly, the blog has been photocentric, but it morphed into stories beyond the where, when and why I photographed the subject. There have been stories about friends and strangers living and dead, stories about places left behind, a heavy pour of memoir, even fiction. When I revisit my posts, I see an arc of growth and the occasional jewel. It beckons me to continue to grow in late middle age.

Writing became as important as photography somewhere along the way. Many of you have underscored that belief. Thank you for that. And thank you for enjoying my Monday morning story with your coffee through the years. Many of you have been on my journey of discovery since its start in 2006. I treasure your support and fellowship.

In this commemorative tome I want to offer a taste of 1,000 posts, 5000 pages in a single post. But, as I type these words, I’m not sure how. Do I post a Best of or try to display the gamut of my efforts? As I often do, I’ll let the words take me where I should go.

Let’s try one and see what happens.

The Last Shepherd

Winter Dance, San Luis Valley, Colorado.

Arguably The Last Shepherd is the most important story I’ve told. It’s the fruit of six years following Victor “Cuba” Hernandez as he herded the Abeyta’s flock of sheep from their ranch in Mogote, Colorado to the Taos Plateau and the Cruces Basin of New Mexico and back again. It’s a story of an illiterate herder who escaped Castro’s Cuba and herded Los Abeyta’s sheep for thirty years. All those years Cuba tended the sheep alone in his metal trailer, he called it his campo, in the mountains and high desert for seven months a year, his only human contact being his patron Andrew Abeyta’s delivery of food, water and supplies. More broadly, it’s the timeless story of rural Hispanic life of Family, Faith and the Land, a story little changed in a hundred years.

The Edge of What's Left

I have a fascination for places left behind. The desert west is strewn with the desiccated reminders of man’s failed attempts to tame a savage land, a land with too much sun, not enough water and a barren garden of dashed dreams.

Presbyterian Church, Taiban, New Mexico.

Taiban, New Mexico is such a place. Driving across New Mexico’s barren plains and 20 miles east of Billy the Kid’s grave stands a proud church built in 1908 for $250, the last vestige of a short-lived railroad boomtown that beckoned settlers when the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad built a station, appealed to dreamers and lasted 30 years. The town, Taiban, grew to 400 souls, the railroad left town and only a brace of saloons, brothels and cock fights survived. The shell of the handsome clapboard church beneath an epic sky closed in 1937 and Taiban will forever be known as the bootleg capitol of eastern New Mexico and West Texas.

Jackrabbit Homestead, Wonder Valley, California.

Meanwhile in the wake of World War Two the federal government began homesteading the parched Morongo Valley of the Mojave Desert. Its target audience was newly discharged soldiers, sailors and marines who were awarded five acres of sand at no cost as long as they developed the property within three years. Kit homes were sold by Sears and Roebuck for $650 and a short lived race was on. Most of the so-called Jackrabbit Homesteads returned to the earth but of lately a plague of carpetbaggers remodel the tiny houses and market them as luxury rentals.

Under a Big Sky

Driving west on I-70 from Denver I saw a rocky escarpment on my right as I passed the Palisade, Colorado exit. I was captivated by the striated cliff face and the commanding sky. I got off at the next exit, made a U-turn on surface roads, found the high point of land across from the Book Cliffs to get this shot. Later, I learned that the cliffs run for 250 miles from just east of Grand Junction to Moab, Utah and it's the largest continuous escarpment in the world.

Book Cliffs, Grand Junction, Colorado.

White Mesa, Teec Nos Pos, Arizona.

Where US 64 ends in Teec Nos Pos, Arizona, the road bends southwest toward Kayenta and becomes the Navajo Highway. Almost immediately I saw a glowing mesa with walking rain to its left as I photographed the majesty. It stopped me in my tracks as an epic sky and layers of dark to light marched across the horizon.

Monumental Heads

Alain Comeau, North Conway, New Hampshire.

Mizahn, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The series Monumental Heads began in New Hampshire. I purloined Weston’s name for the portraits, really headshots, that he made in 1920s Mexico City. His coterie of players included Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Leo Trotsky and his lover of the moment Tina Modotti, the actor, model and a noted photographer in her own right. Weston believed that a featureless sky was the world’s finest light source. As early as 2002 I emulated the master with my willing models, John Snyder and Alain Comeau at Schartner’s Farm in North Conway. That handsome afternoon launched a series that continues to this day.

Found Art

Butternut Squash, East Conway, New Hampshire.

Not long after Monumental Heads began, I started seeking something special in the ordinary. Fittingly, my artist statement says that “I hope to reveal the beauty of the subject no matter how ordinary or simple.” The first test of that objective happened as we were driving back to North Conway from the Fryeburg Fair in Maine. It was drizzling when we stopped at an open air farmstand selling all manner of squash. Because of the murky sky and moisture laden air, the squash glistened as if they were polished and the dim light touched the surface of the squad but fell off to shadow within six inches. It was magical and I consider Butternut Squash among my best.

Silk Roses, Bethlehem, New Hampshire.

Driving west on US 302 to Putney, Vermont with writer and photographer John Snyder we stopped in Bethlehem, New Hampshire to photograph clapboard buildings on our right. In the rear window of an early 19^th century dwelling were barely lit silk roses on the windowsill. Like the squash the surface of the fabric flowers was touched by the sun before fading into the darkness.

Too Many goodbyes

Juma Archuletta, The Good Cutter.

Right of high school in Las Animas, Colorado Juma Archuletta escaped to Denver to become a barber. Knowing the erudite, art collecting bon vivant as he approached 70 that goal seemed like a modest calling. He told me that to be Hispano from the wrong side of the tracks in Las Animas was not his dream. So, he went to barber school, was hired by the owner of the most popular shop on Capitol Hill and before he turned 21 owned his own shop for 30 years. Then he moved to Taos where he owned a shop for 25 years. He told me, “I was really lucky that I learned from a Good Cutter. In his obituary I wrote about his barbering, being the unofficial mayor of Taos, and his fictional alter ego Raul, the disappeared barber. The Raul ruse concocted by Juma and local wag Bill Whaley was so convincing it was covered in the NY Times and the Washington Post. Juma didn’t live to celebrate 50 years as a “good cutter” which was his goal. At the end he was cutting hair in his garage two days a week for pocket money and manly banter.

Encounters of the First Kind

Ken Tingley, Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico

I was photographing the roaring Rio Hondo when a skinny gent in a too large tied dyed tee shirt yelled “Hey, take my picture. I’m getting married today.” It was an impertinent request, but he was a real character and I went with the flow. I photographed him by the overlook then followed him back to his 1970s trailer. All the while he was telling me his life story which was, shall we say, marinated. When we got to his trailer he stepped into the cabin, poured himself two inches of bourbon and lit a smoke. He pointed at a shrine on the table. He pointed at a photograph of a man in twenties. “That’s my son. He died 15 years ago. See the tee shirt he’s wearing? I’m wearing it right now.”

A little street music

Campesino, Mercado Central, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Pet Chicken, Philmont Scout Ranch, Cimarron, New Mexico.

Candid photographs, especially when the subject is unaware or if I’m caught in the act, are a vicarious thrill with just a hint of risk. Other times the victim will nod that they’re game and they’ll run through their poses like pros. The boyish frontiersman from Rolla, Missouri did just that. It was not his first round up.

The Fog Series

Silent Running, Putney, Vermont.

Canopy, Point Reyes National Seashore, West Marin, California.

Occluded Sun, Petaluma-Point Reyes Road, West Marin, California.

Fog may be my favorite condition for photography. The mystery and heavy silence envelop me. My earliest shot of a barn just inland from Mendocino was more than 50 years ago and evokes a feeling for the California Coast that I’m still chasing. It was 40 years before another image joined it and less than a year ago when another became a member. Silent Running dates to 2006, Canopy 2014 and Occluded Sun 2024.

Sketches of Winter

Lines of Defence, Valles Caldera, New Mexico.

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Duet, Brazos Pass, New Mexico.

Inky Shadows, Brazos Pass, New Mexico.

The polar opposite of the rich, thick and quiet Fog Series is Sketches of Winter, a portfolio that grew from an incidental photograph of weeds piercing fresh snow. I was photographing a lay chapel called a morada when I observed the impudent weeds and took a single picture. It was an afterthought at best. But when I processed the file, I saw that there was something special about it and there was a theme to be plumbed. Shortly in the winter of 2009 I was in the field building on the idea. By 2010 I’d had two one person shows of the work and recently as 2024 another in Taos at Wilder Nightingale Fine Art. In 2024 the portfolio was as fresh as it had been 15 years before. And like the first show at the gallery, viewers deemed the minimalist images to be more like pen and ink drawings than photographs. As in 2009 I took that as a compliment. The work was its own category. And all the sales were to visual artists, mostly painters.

All of these themes and subjects enjoyed at least one full blog post of their own and most many more than that. The Last Shepherd had three exhibitions and an article in High Country News. If any of my work warrants a museum show or a book The Last Shepherd is it.

I think this was a worthy effort to show the breadth and style of my efforts since 2006. For those of you have joined me on my journey these many years I hope you've enjoyed the look back. If you are new to my blog I hope your interest is piqued and you'll join me for more adventures with images and stories. 

There's a handy Subscribe link on the right side of the first page of each post and a convenient blue Post to Blog link at the bottom. Please use both. I thank you very much for both.

 

Test Pattern

This is a test. My efforts to use the so-called Short email announcing Monday’s post have been lackluster. The Short email cannot include an image and includes the erstwhile image’s title in the snippet of text. It’s not pretty.

Today I’m trying a workaround that may solve part of the problem.

Thanks for listening.

Sangre de Cristo Chapel, Cuartalez, New Mexico.

What's your story?

Luis Ocejo in Llano San Juan.

I’ve seen that when you first meet a kindred spirit, they’ll share the most important things in their life in the first five minutes. Standing In front of the Catholic Church in Llano San Juan, New Mexico Luis Ocejo blurted, “You don’t mess with a Viet Nam veteran.  We’re tough.”

Rudy Mauldin, Cline's Corner, New Mexico.

Rudy Mauldin, who managed a cattle ranch on US 285 near Cline’s Corner told me he’d been a cowboy his entire life. He’d cowboyed in New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Texas. So had his father. He’d gone to high school on the Pojoaque Pueblo and had been beaten up so many times he couldn’t count that high. The experience gave him ulcers. The highlight of his working life, he told me, was being an undercover agent for the Bureau of Land Management in Utah. He was part of a team that caught a Mormon rancher looting Native American artifacts on Federal land. It was the first conviction of its kind using DNA evidence.

Clarence Vigil. Cundiyo, New Mexico.

Right off the bat Clarence Vigil told me that he was a Jehovah’s Witness. “We’re very strict but it’s worked for me. You know I built Mother Ship in Brooklyn.” Then he said he hadn’t wanted to fight in Viet Nam. Instead, he served two years in a Federal Penitentiary near Safford, Arizona. He became a wildland firefighter there, a common assignment for inmates even now. “It wasn’t that bad” he said. “Then I became a carpenter and a contractor. My wife and I have been everywhere even China. We’ve had a good life”

“I can tell you’re a good guy. You want a dozen eggs? These are so fresh they’ll last three months.” Then he pitched me on joining his church. I told him that  “I’m not a believer, Clarence.” He smiled, “We all have doubts.”

Ken Tingsley, Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico.

As I was photographing the roaring Rio Hondo, a scruffy gent yelled, “Take my picture. I’m getting married today.” I took several shots at the overlook and followed Ken Tingsley back to his 1970s trailer. He stepped into the cabin, poured himself two inches of bourbon, lit a cigarette and pointed at a shrine with a picture of a young man in a tied died tee shirt. “That’s my son. He died 20 years ago. I miss him so much. I’m wearing his tee shirt right now.”

Amy French, Mary Coulter's Watchtower, Grand Canyon.

The first words out of Amy French’s mouth as I photographed her behind Mary Colter’s Desert View Watchtower at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon was, “I’m a breast cancer survivor. I’ve just finished treatment.” She and her partner Dave who had been campground hosts throughout the west before she became the manager of the Watchtower. She gave me the world’s best tour of iconic tower and its sweeping view. We shared stories of endurance sports. She and Dave were competitive distance runners. She told me, “My sweet spot is the moderate distances like 40-50 miles.” I shared that I had been a triathlete in the mid-80s. “That may have been the best time in my life, to be so fit in your mid-forties and at the peak of your powers, mentally and physically. I miss that feeling.”

John Bustos, Heart Mountain Internment Camp.

John Bustos was an impressive man. Only 5’8” Master Sargent Bustos carried 210 pounds and was all chest and neck. Bustos who had served in Viet Nam was commanding the honor guard at the Heart Mountain Reunion in Powell, Wyoming. Heart Mountain is a monument to the infamous Japanese American Internment camp in Powell. He led the honor guard through their salutes. When the volleys were finished, he whispered, “You know we always keep an extra round in the chamber. Mine’s for Obama.”

In the interest of science

Mormon Row at Sundown.

I’ve been experimenting with the format of the email that announces my weekly blog post. For 1,000 posts over 19 years you have received the entire blog in your Monday email. And for those 1,000 posts you’ve been spared the need to click on the post title to reach the actual website where you can Subscribe or Comment. In the interest of transparency, both of those functions serve my interests. I want more readers (Subscribers) and I crave feedback.

In this test post I have chosen Short (an excerpt from the post) not the Full post you’ve received all these years. Let's see what happens.

The image at the top of the post has nothing to do with this message. I simply want to see if the image and representative text appears in tomorrow’s experiment. My digits are crossed.

Good Luck to us all.

Please use the handy blue Post a Comment link at the bottom of the post to tell me how this process works for you. I appreciate it.

The Road to Divine Light

 

A glorious glow bathes San Francisco de Asis in Ranchos de Taos, a scant four miles from where I write these words.

In northern New Mexico referred to locally as El Norte we’re surrounded by reminders of the Franciscan Catholics who arrived in the late 16^th  century, conquered the Pueblo Indians and built adobe churches throughout this part of the world. Miraculously the Church did the same throughout the Americas at the same time. Within a century they built churches from South America to Central America, the Caribbean and what is now the United States of America. They got as far north as Taos. The mind boggles at what the Church accomplished under the Banner of Heaven. How they did it is another story.

20 miles south on the High Road to Taos is the rectory of the Spanish Mission Church in Truchas, NM.

On a hard to find back road lies the picture perfect church in Cundiyo, New Mexico.

And finally the Sangre de Cristo Chapel in the barely there village of Cuartalez. The chapel is a clapboard anomaly in the adobe world that is El Norte.

In Taos, our home, we’re half a mile away from the northern most Grand Hacienda in New Mexico and four miles from the most famous Franciscan church in New Mexico, San Francisco de Asis in Ranchos de Taos. On the High Road that begins and ends in Ranchos are mission churches in the smallest villages where faith prevails, and time seems to have stood still. In my portfolio Divine Light are many examples of timeless Pueblo style architecture. Here are three adobes and the clapboard jewel in Cuartalez.

This is a truncated effort while I contemplate how to create a post that celebrates 1,000 over the last 19 years. I have a couple of weeks to figure out how to pull that off. That's 4,000 or more pages, even more photographs and eclectic content ranging from few photographs and descriptive text to full on magazine articles that publish every Monday. It's been a wild ride but is one I'll take till I can't ride the beast.

Please click on the blue Post a Comment link at the bottom of the post to tell me what you think. I'm hungry for your feedback.

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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www.immelphoto.com