Contemporary photography in Santa Fe

Afterimage, Jan-Feb, 1998 by David Clemmer

The American Southwest in general, and the New Mexican communities of Santa Fe and Taos in particular, have long held a fascination for artists. Whether arriving in northern New Mexico by chance or design, an extraordinary variety of visual artists and writers have found the region's unique natural beauty and its tri-cultural (Anglo, Hispanic and Native American) heritage to be a powerful and stimulating attraction. The most famous of all, of course, was Georgia O'Keeffe, whose legacy remains a formidable force to this day. The changes that have taken place since the time of O'Keeffe's first visit in 1929 have been tremendous, yet despite the assorted incursions and insults of the military-industrial complex, high technology, tourism, rapid population growth and Santa Fe Style, northern New Mexico's singular allure has proven remarkably durable.

Painting, sculpture and native crafts have been the primary forms in New Mexico's cultural legacy, but photography has played a highly significant role. One of the enduring cliches of the region is the rapture of the visitor and transplant over the special quality of the northern New Mexico light. Cliche though it may be, there is, in fact, something ineffable about The Light, and it is therefore not surprising that the art of captured light occupies a special place here. The list of late notables who have produced bodies of work in New Mexico includes Edward S. Curtis, Adam Clark Vroman, Paul Strand, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Laura Gilpin, William Clift, Paul Caponigro, Willard Van Dyke and Eliot Porter. Their images continue to resonate here on a variety of levels - as inspiration, as history, as commodity.

The cities of Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos have come to constitute a formidable axis of artistic talent, intellect, commerce, ambition and marketing. Santa Fe reigns as the commercial art center of the state, and conventional wisdom places the city third - behind New York and Los Angeles - in terms of annual art revenue dollars. Taos remains a small town, albeit a seasonally congested one, and it still offers refuge to artists desirous of some urban amenities while wishing to avoid the glitzier, faster-paced Santa Fe scene. With a population of over a half million, the majority of the people in the state work and live in the sprawling Albuquerque metro area. The University of New Mexico (UNM) in Albuquerque has long been the state's intellectual powerhouse, and over the past 30-plus years it has earned a reputation as a major center for photographic practice and studies. Beginning in the early 1970s, the historian/photographer Van Deren Coke was instrumental in assembling a major photography collection at UNM's art museum. Coke was also successful in luring another eminent scholar and artist, Beaumont Newhall (and his wife, Nancy), to New Mexico to teach at UNM. Throughout the '70s and '80s, the presence of Coke and Newhall gave preeminence to UNM's photo history graduate program, and Eugenia Parry continued the tradition into the '90s. (Nicholas Nixon, Robert ParkeHarrison, Meridel Rubenstein and Joel-Peter Witkin are just a few of the many notable graduates of the UNM program.)

David Scheinbaum and Janet Russek - seminal figures in Santa Fe's photography community - handle the estates of both Newhall and Porter (Scheinbaum was Newhall's assistant and printer for 15 years, and Russek was Porter's assistant for 10 years). As Scheinbaum notes, "Many of us who have come here - whether as photographers, dealers, scholars, or whatever - grew up with imagery of New Mexico. It's a place that we knew from our lives as students and as artists - it was familiar." The husband and wife team has been dealing photography in Santa Fe since 1980, and their galleries have always been at the center of Santa Fe's photo scene. Scheinbaum and Russek went private in 1994, and both remark on how the cohesive, vibrant photography community that existed in Santa Fe throughout the '80s has retrenched in the '90s. Russek remarks, however, that "Although there might be a certain lack of visibility of a significant photography scene here, I would venture to say that anyone could be called up and talked to. People are here, doing their work and living the lifestyle they want, but that doesn't mean they're not accessible." They are both hopeful that major developments at the College of Santa Fe, where Scheinbaum is an instructor, will give cohesion to the Santa Fe photography world and bring back some of the old energy.

The photography market in Santa Fe has weathered its share of storms, and over the past few years a number of establishments have either closed, moved, or gone private, leaving barely a scant handful of public galleries specializing in the photo medium. One significant loss was Laura Carpenter Fine Art, which closed in 1996 (Carpenter declared bankruptcy in late 1995 after a bitter split with her Denver-based financial backer, Ginny Williams). Carpenter upped the ante for the entire Santa Fe art scene by presenting cutting edge work by blue chip American and international contemporary artists, including several important photographers. Carpenter's 1993 exhibition "Eight Photographers for the 90s" featured the work of Andres Serrano, Adam Fuss, Michal Rovner, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Joshua Cooper and others. Word has it that Carpenter's longtime gallery director, Jim Kelly, will be carrying on in a similar mode, and will likely be opening a space in the not-too-distant future.