Orphans in the Archives

Posted on May 16, 2014 by DCA WEB

With something like 1 million images in its files, boxes, drawers and stacks, the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives has a tough time keeping up with knowing what’s what. Often, we rely on volunteers to help us identify who’s who, which mountain is which or whose hand opened the shutter in photos that arrive with little documentation. Sometimes, our Facebook fans help out.

Lacking such knowledge, the images are known are “orphans.” Tonight, the Matthews Gallery on Canyon Road opens a new exhibit, Familiar Strangers: Vernacular Photography (through May 23), dedicated to celebrating unknown photographers whose works are as haunting as those from “celebrity” shooters.

“Provenance is so important when it comes to our historic work, but brilliant art doesn’t have to have a famous name on it,” says gallery owner Lawrence Matthews. “Familiar Strangers is a tribute to amateur artists who never got—or perhaps even sought—the recognition they deserved.”

In advance of the opening, the gallery interviewed Hannah Abelbeck, the Photo Archives’ digitization specialist. Part of her job involves the hunt and discovery of unknown talents. Here’s a little excerpt:

We have a set of collections that exist in this limbo land between the old cataloguing system and the new cataloguing system. We might know something about them, or they might just be a box of photographs sitting on a shelf. This box says “Forrest Fenn“, so he probably donated them. Some have a photographer’s name on the back and some don’t. The stack of files is catalogued by location or subject— “New Mexico Towns” or “Portraits”.

There’s more; it’s a great interview. Give it a read here.

Learn more about the exhibit here.

Pinhole Photographers, Unite!

Posted on April 30, 2014 by DCA WEB

When we decided to showcase some of the images and cameras in the museum’s Pinhole Resource Collection, we knew that thousands of visitors would become enchanted. Little did we know how the photographers themselves would react.

When Poetics of Light: Pinhole Photography opened April 27, 30 photographers from around the world arrived in Santa Fe, eager to see their work included in the exhibition. And, it turns out, eager to meet one another. They met the evening before at a private reception generously hosted by Verve Gallery. And by the time the opening rolled around, their camaraderie had an old school reunion feeling to it.

Some of them purchased copies of the Museum of New Mexico Press book, Poetics of Light: Contemporary Pinhole Photography, then passed them around for signing almost as though they were yearbooks. Here’s astrophysicist Ed Fenimore signing someone’s copy:

And here’s some of the gang gathered in the museum lobby after shooting a group photograph (yeah, they took lots of photographs) in the Palace Courtyard:

Guest curators Eric Renner and Nancy Spencer founded the Pinhole Resource in San Lorenzo, NM, and donated its 6,000 photos to the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives in 2012. Upstairs, in the exhibit area, Renner (at right) greeted old friends and photographers:

And out in the Palace Courtyard, photographer Donald Lawrence sat on a chair surrounded by photo-developing chemicals, carefully working on a new negative the traditional way:

“I always thought of myself as a loner,” said Lawrence, who lives in Camloops, British Columbia, and whose underwater kayak camera is on display in the exhibit. “Being here shows me that I’m really part of a community.”

We’re especially grateful to all the other folks who showed up on Sunday, yet another part of our community, people who are just learning that they may want to be part of that Pinhole Photography Fraternity, too.

Poetics of Light: Pinhole Photography is on display at the New Mexico History Museum through January 10, 2016, so there’s plenty of time to come and …. check out how a pinhole camera works:

…test a simple camera obscura device:

…and learn how camera obscuras work:

Donald Woodman Photographs Celebrate New Mexico

Posted on March 4, 2014 by DCA WEB

Beginning with his early years working as a research photographer at the Sacramento Peak Solar Observatory in southern New Mexico, photographer Donald Woodman honed a photographic vision first through stars and clouds and then through sandy soil, majestic peaks and his own interior life. You can experience that journey in Donald Woodman: Transformed by New Mexico, in the Mezzanine gallery through Oct. 12.

The exhibit represents the first of a yearlong series of events celebrating all the museum has accomplished since opening in 2009. In 2011, Woodman was the first person to donate his photographs and materials to the Photo Legacy Project at the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives. Since then, numerous other contemporary photographers have added their archives, including Jack Parsons, Sam Adams, Herbert A. Lotz, and more.

Curated by Mary Anne Redding,photography chair at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, Transformed by new Mexico includes more than a dozen examples of the Belen-based photographer’s work from the early 1970s to 1998. Among the images are ones taken at the Sacramento Peak Solar Observatory in Sunspot, NM, and intimate selections from his Therapist Series. Each one invites you to look deeply at the tones, forms and shapes; to begin to understand the relationship Woodman has with his cameras, his world, and himself as he moves quietly from behind the lens to placing himself in its focus.

“In many ways,” Redding said, “Donald Woodman is one of the stereotypical free spirits who arrived in New Mexico in a VW van in the early 1970s, searching for a new life unfettered by the conservative conventions and stodginess of the East Coast, to experiment with new-found freedoms involving hallucinatory drugs and liberated sexual exploration. And yet, Woodman’s long personal aesthetic trajectory, which continues today, is uniquely his own.”

After his initial New Mexico work at Sunspot, Woodman became a personal assistant to legendary painter Agnes Martin in Galisteo. In 1985 he married artist Judy Chicago, whose paintings will be at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Local Color: Judy Chicago in New Mexico 1984-2014, opening June 6.

Images above, from top: Sand Dune with Bush — White Sands, NM, ca. 1972. Silver gelatin print, 9×12 in. Waning Moon, ca. 1970s. Archival pigment print, 5×5 in. Two Boys in a Doorway, ca. 1970. Archival pigment print, 25×20 in. All photos by Donald Woodman. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, Photo Legacy Project.

Crazy ’bout a Sharp-Dressed Man

Posted on February 26, 2014 by DCA WEB

Pinhole photography, at its heart, combines the most low-tech materials with the highest ideals of art. Nowhere can that be better seen than in Ben Conrad’s pinhole suit.

Lately, the only place to see it has been the Conservation Lab behind the museum’s administrative offices. There, Casey Mallinckrodt, an intern for the Conservation Department of the Museum of New Mexico, has painstakingly repaired cameras that consist of little more than cardboard, duct tape, electrician’s tape and glue. In 1994, Conrad used Velcro to affix 125 of the rickety cameras to a pair of Big Ben coveralls and a motorcycle helmet. Working with assistants in a darkroom, he loaded the cameras with film. His helpers covered him with a tarp and ferried him outside, where they lifted the tarp to expose the film. Quickly covering him again, they returned to the darkroom to develop the multi-eyed vision of his surroundings.

As Conrad explained the purpose in 1995: “The pinhole suit is an experiment to see what it would look like if the pores of the human skin were camera apertures. … (I) want to photograph on locations in public areas that are under surveillance, such as banks, airports, parks and grocery stores. With the pinhole suit I’m exposing myself and exposing the film. Where the 35mm is a spectator, the pinhole suit is both spectator and spectacle.”

Caroline Lajoie, designer of the exhibition, Poetics of Light: Pinhole Photography, opening April 27, has devised a way to display the suit on a mannequin surrounded by the images it took.

As basic as Conrad’s materials may have been, nothing goes on exhibit without conservators taking a serious look at them. Mallinckrodt did just that, even subjecting various parts of the suit to spectral examination, solubility tests, and Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. Knowing the suit’s roots, her report almost reads scientifically tongue-in-cheek: “The motorcycle helmet is structurally sound. … There are areas of fine cracking in the outer layer of plastic that may be the result of impact or deterioration of the material, but these cracks do not impair use in this assembly.”

Lowriders Hanging High

Posted on December 27, 2013 by DCA WEB

Wander into the Palace of the Governors’ entrance and you’ll get a taste of the renovations being planned for our favorite National Historic Landmark. The front desk has been converted into a smaller, more appropriate size, clad in copper and topped with granite. On the walls, you’ll see a contemporary take on New Mexico’s Hispanic culture.

A few of Jack Parsons’ images of Northern New Mexico lowriders make up a temporary exhibition that also celebrates the Photo Legacy Project. As dreamed up by the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, the project collects the works of contemporary photographers. Parsons was an early and eager contributor.

The photos on display first appeared in the 2005 Museum of New Mexico Press book, Low ’n Slow: Lowriding in New Mexico, by Parsons, Carmella Padilla and Juan Estevan Arellano. Through Parsons’ images, Padilla’s essays and Arellano’s slang-style dialogues, the book explored the lowrider lifestyle in ways that honored its dignity.

“The lobby area is the first step of a larger effort to freshen up the Palace’s rooms,” museum Director Frances Levine said. “Jack’s photos give it color and liveliness while underscoring the Palace’s 400-year-old tie to Spanish culture in the United States.”

Parsons, who lives in Santa Fe, won a 2006 Governor’s Award for Excellence and Achievement in the Arts. His work can be seen in numerous books, including Dark Beauty and Santa Fe Style.

USS New Mexico’s Bell Finds a Permanent Home

Posted on November 16, 2012 by DCA WEB

By the time the USS New Mexico battleship was decommissioned in 1946, her bells had rung out alarms of attacks and tolled the grief felt by those who survived as they buried at sea the shipmates who had given their lives. The “Queen of the Fleet,” commissioned in 1918 and christened with both champagne and the waters of the Rio Grande, had served as the finest battleship of the Pacific fleet and endured attacks by kamikazes and bombers. For her World War II service, the ship received six battle stars and is still recalled with awe — even though she was sold for scrap in 1947.

The story might have ended there but for those bells — one of which arrived on Friday, Nov. 16, at the New Mexico History Museum after a circuitous post-war life. That part of the story goes back to New Mexico Gov. Thomas Mabry, who began working in 1947 on obtaining one of the ship’s two bells.

His correspondence with Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan reflects the state’s desire to spare the bell from the scrapyard. Sullivan shared the goal, but it was a weighty one — 1,100 pounds, according to a Dec. 22, 1947, letter from the Navy chief.

“It was the practice of the Navy to outfit some of the older battleships with two bells, and the U.S.S. NEW MEXICO was so equipped,” he wrote. “It would give me much pleasure to donate the bell of the U.S.S. NEW MEXICO to you on behalf of the State of New Mexico, but before doing so, there are two conditions which must be fulfilled. The first is that Congress must approve all donations. … The second condition is that the State of New Mexico must agree to defray all expenses incidental to packing and shipping.”

Our correspondence file includes Mabry’s request to obtain the portion of the ship’s bulkhead that held a painted record of how many Japanese planes and shore installations were destroyed by the ship’s guns. If the letters are correct, the bulkhead made it to New Mexico, but we’ve been unable to trace where it went. We do, however, know what happened to the bell.

In 1948, Gov. Mabry and Mayor Frank Ortiz officiated at a dedication ceremony as the bell was placed on the Santa Fe Plaza. (The photo above was taken at the event by Robert H. Martin. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives 41320.) It stood on the Plaza for nearly 30 years. An early 1970s Plaza renovation forced its removal, but the Manuel Lujan Sr. building in the state’s South Capitol Complex gladly took possession of it. It hung below a stairway near the building’s vending-machine area until a recent renovation there forced yet another move.

This time, we were ready. We have the storage space, we have a small exhibition dedicated to the battleship and its nuclear-submarine namesake, and we have staffers who feel an emotional tie to the ship and its mates.

“It represents to much,” said Tom Leech, director of the Palace Press and curator of our lobby-area exhibit, A Noble Legacy: The USS New Mexico. “When I think about what that bell has been through — it’s rung general alarms when the ship was under attack. It rang when those guys were buried at sea.”

(To learn more about the ship’s ordeals and heroism, check out this mini-documentary, USS New Mexico BB40: The Drinan Diary, produced by the museum and Michael Kamins of KNME-TV in Albuquerque.)

Getting the bell delivered to our loading dock was one thing. Figuring out how to get it to our lower-level almost-hermetically-sealed collections vault was another.

First, staff members eyeballed it. Warily.

Then, four of our burliest guys tried to move it …

… but couldn’t even budge it.

Finally, we resorted to good old hydraulics.

As for what happened to the second bell, we know that the University of New Mexico acquired it, possibly with the help of the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity, but we aren’t certain where it is. Outside the Student Union Building? At the football stadium? Inside the ROTC building? If you know, drop us a line. (And if you know what happened to its clapper, which our records showed “disappeared, mysteriously, during the early 1970s,” we’d be interested in that as well.)

Our hope is to put our bell on display as soon as we polish off some other priorities. One popular suggestion is to place it in the Palace Courtyard. We’ll let you know when that happens. In the meantime, we’re pleased and proud that an important part of New Mexico’s heritage is sharing quarters with so many other artifacts that tell the stories of who we are.

Picture This: Photo Archives Intern Lauren Gray

Posted on October 15, 2012 by DCA WEB

Ask most of us why we work here and “I love history” is sure to be one of the top three reasons. That goes double for Lauren Gray, an intern in the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, former intern in the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, and recent graduate of the University of New Mexico’s master’s program in U.S. history (with an emphasis in Colonial History and a secondary in Medieval and Early Modern Europe).

Since January, Gray has been working as part of a three-year grant to digitize and preserve the photo collections. She has fastidiously and meticulously scanned and archived thousands of photographs, bringing an acute attention to detail, careful handling of fragile photographs and the ability to organize large amounts of data to the job. Her efforts play a very important role in bringing the Photo Archives into the digital age and allowing the public to view photos wherever they happen to be on planet Earth.

Her biggest challenge? Learning how to use new software and restoring old photographs that have been badly damaged by time. “It’s extremely frustrating to see history deteriorating right in front of you,” she said while scanning a pinhole photograph. “But it’s also really rewarding to be able to preserve these artifacts and even restore them.”

Gray’s appreciation for the museum extends beyond the northeast corner of our campus. Her favorite exhibit was Fashioning New Mexico, the inaugural changing exhibition in the Herzstein Gallery when the museum opened in 2009. “I love tactile things and anything that brings history alive in an interactive and intriguing way.” (See the interactive web version of the exhibit here.)

Her favorite event is the Santa Fe Mountain Man Trade Fair because “mountain men are unique to American history, and it’s fascinating to see people keeping the tradition alive.”

Just how deep is her love for the History Museum? In September, Gray and her fiancée, Christian, were married in the Palace Courtyard. The couple shares a love of history and wanted to make a lifelong commitment there, Gray said, because of its long and diverse history and its beauty – a perfect fit for a happy marriage.

100 books, 56 cameras and 6,000 pinhole photographs

Posted on June 13, 2012 by DCA WEB

Mysterious, artistic, and as low-tech as an oatmeal box, pinhole photography has captivated everyone from schoolchildren to professional photographers for more than a century. The Pinhole Resource Archives, the world’s largest collection of images, books and cameras, just joined New Mexico’s largest archive of photography, the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives at the New Mexico History Museum.

The collection was a donation from Pinhole Resource Inc., which is based in New Mexico and led by Eric Renner and Nancy Spencer. (The image at left is “Brooklyn Bridge, New York City,” by Ilan Wolff, 1987. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives HP.2012.15.369.)

“In looking at other possible repositories for the Pinhole Resource Collection, we felt the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives had a tremendous web presence, which would make the collection accessible to people worldwide,” Renner and Spencer said in a prepared statement. “In addition, with the staff’s enthusiasm and interest in pinhole images we felt the collection would have a good home here in New Mexico.”

The Photo Archives has already digitized hundreds of the images, which can be searched here (click on “Browse Pinhole Resource Collection” or type the word “Pinhole” into the search box).

“The Photo Archives and the state of New Mexico is fortunate to be the repository for this world-class collection of pinhole photography. There is no other collection like it and is a tremendous addition to the resources made available to the public through the Photo Archives,” said archivist Daniel Kosharek.

Even in this digital age, pinhole photography remains an intriguing medium. Its continued popularity has been celebrated every April since 2001 with Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. The 2010 event drew 3,387 images from 67 countries.

An exhibition of images from this unparalleled collection of pinhole photographs, representing images from New Mexico and around the world, is scheduled for April 2014 Poetics of Light will coincide with Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day.

(The image at left is “Anne S. in front of Jack B.’s Pool,” 1984, by Willie Anne Wright. She was the first pinhole photographer to place Cibachrome positive photographic paper directly into her 11”x14” pinhole camera. Wright’s photograph, a five-minute exposure, graced the cover of the first issue of “Pinhole Journal” in 1985. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives HP.2012.15.763.)

In the 5^th century BC, a Chinese philosopher noted the inverted image produced through a pinhole—an effect that led to development of the camera obscura and serves as the fundamental quality of pinhole photography. Renaissance artists Leonardo da Vinci, Filippo Brunelleschi, and Leon Battista Alberti advanced the knowledge of pinhole camera obscura imagery, creating a basis and understand of one-point perspective. In 1850, Sir David Brewster, a Scottish scientist, took the first photograph with a pinhole camera. By the mid-1980s, a variety of pinhole cameras could be purchased by anyone who wanted to create images without creating the camera.

In its most simple description, a pinhole camera is a lens-less camera with a small aperture. The interior of the “camera” (which can be, yes, an oatmeal box…or a traffic cone…or the human mouth…) contains a piece of film that records the projected image over periods of time that can range from a second to a year.

When the atomic bomb test was conducted at the Trinity Site in New Mexico, Julian Mack, working for the Los Alamos National Laboratories, documented the explosion with a pinhole camera (image at left; Palace of the Governors Photo Archives HP.2012.15.775).

Pinhole Resource Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to pinhole photography across the globe, was formed in New Mexico in 1984 by Eric Renner. He began working in pinhole photography in 1968, while teaching three-dimensional design for the State University of New York at Alfred. Images from his 6 pinhole panoramic camera were shown in the first exhibition of the Visual Studies Workshop Gallery in Rochester, New York. Consequently, one of Renner’s images was included in the Time-Life Series The Art of Photography, 1971. Through exhibitions and workshops, he met pinhole artists throughout the world and worried that their work might become as lost as the thousands of images taken during the Pictorial Movement from the late 1880s to early 1900s.

After forming the nonprofit, he created the Pinhole Journal, and in 1989 was joined by Nancy Spencer, co-director of Pinhole Resource and co-editor of the journal, which ceased publication in 2006. Their collections included images from Europe, the Mideast, Asia and the Americas, books about pinhole photography, and dozens of pinhole cameras, one of which dates back to the 1880s.

The Palace of the Governors Photo Archives contains more than 800,000 prints, cased photographs, glass plate negatives, stereographs, photo postcards, lantern slides and more. Almost 20,000 images can be keyword searched on its website. The materials date from approximately 1850 to the present and cover the history and people of New Mexico from some of the most important 19^th– and 20^th-century photographers of the West—Adolph Bandelier, George C. Bennett, John Candelario, W.H. Cobb, Edward S. Curtis, Charles Lindbergh, Jesse Nusbaum, T. Harmon Parkhurst, Ben Wittick, and many others.

The Archives actively seeks material from contemporary photographers as well in order to document the past 50 years of visual history in New Mexico. Recent acquisitions include works by Jack Parsons, Herbert A. Lotz, Tony O’Brien, Steve Fitch, David Michael Kennedy, John Willis, Ann Bromberg, and Cary Herz.

What a Frame-Up: “Native American Portraits”

Posted on May 30, 2012 by DCA WEB

Native American Portraits: Points of Inquiry, the new exhibition in the New Mexico History Museum’s Mezzanine Gallery, features more than 50 exquisite, original prints taken from the mid-1800s to 1035. What makes them even more arresting are the more than 50 frames surrounding each photo.

How we found them is one of the interesting little back-stories that so many museums have to tell.

The show is hung in what’s known as a “salon style” exhibition, where the groupings look more like what you might see in someone’s living room than the standard march of photos across a wall most common in museums. Given that, curator and archivist Daniel Kosharek, along with exhibition designer Caroline Lajoie, didn’t want a series of identical frames. But they lacked the funds to order up an assortment from your local frame shape.

The hunt was on.

“It started with a few finds at a garage sale,” Daniel said.

Andrew Smith, one of the co-curators of the exhibit and owner of Andrew Smith Gallery, provided three historically accurate frames for the Edward S. Curtis images. The Museum of New Mexico’s Conservation Department helped create several shadowbox-like frames to hold postcard images in a sort of suspended animation, rather than tacking them down.

“It ended with scouring the basement of a local gallery and molding-diving in the storage locker of a framing company,” Daniel said. “The end result? Well, you be the judge.”

Photo Archives Discovers a Rare Photo of Navajo Leader Manuelito

Posted on November 29, 2010 by DCA WEB

Boxes filled with photographs, negatives and more line shelves that reach ceiling-high in the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives. To the three-person staff responsible for archiving the contents, the process must sometimes feel like bailing out the ocean with a bucket. At high tide.

So you can understand how mysteries might lie hidden for years, decades even. But the promise of a new discovery keeps the archivists pulling the boxes down, tugging open their lids and hunting through their contents.

Last May, Daniel Kosharek had one of those dreamed-of a-ha moments.

Navajo war chief Manuelito (seated) with another Navajo war chief, identified in the photograph as Cayetanito, ca. 1870s.

In a box holding part of the Henry T. Hiester/Melander Brothers Collection, Kosharek discovered a previously unknown photo of famed Navajo leader Manuelito, taken around 1870 and given to the archives 50 years ago. The photo graces the cover of the new edition of El Palacio, the scholarly magazine of the Museums of New Mexico, and is catching the attention of journalists across the nation. El Palacio carries a story about the discovery by Mary Anne Redding, director of the Photo Archives, and a sidebar by historian Charles Bennett Jr. on Manuelito’s history and lasting impact. An excerpt from Redding’s piece:

The Photo Archives is full of undiscovered treasures like the Manuelito portrait. With a collection of more than 800,000 images and an antiquated cataloguing system, which the current staff of three is rapidly working to update, there are wonderful gems still hidden away in boxes and cabinets, waiting to be discovered. … Each box is like a gift waiting to be opened on a special day.

Manuelito’s monumental role in Navajo life includes his 1866 surrender to the Bosque Redondo reservation (and his subsequent escape), an 1868 meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant in Washington, D.C., and an 1880 meeting with President Rutherford B. Hayes in Santa Fe. On the Navajo reservation, his name is carried by the Manuelito Navajo Children’s Home, the Manuelito Chapter House, and the Chief Manuelito Scholarship.

The photo Kosharek discovered shows Manuelito sitting beside another Navajo war chief identified as Cayetanito. Historians know of only a handful of Manuelito portraits, taken by photographers Charles M. Bell, George Ben Wittick, and possibly William Henry Jackson and John Gaige.

The History Museum has begun the process to put the “new” photo on display, perhaps in the permanent Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now exhibition. Until then, you can get a gander at some of the archives’ holdings without even leaving your chair. Click onto the archives’ digitized collections, and you can keyword-hunt for the portion of images the staff has been able to upload. (Warning: Highly addictive Web site.)

You can also pick up the latest El Palacio for $8 at any of the Museum of New Mexico shops (Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, New Mexico History Museum, Museum of International Folk Art, and New Mexico Museum of Art), or for $10 (postage added in) by calling 505-476-1126 or e-mailing elpalacio@state.nm.us. Here’s a not-so-subtle hint: You can support scholarly research at our museums and deepen your knowledge of New Mexico’s art, history and culture by springing for a subscription. Do I hear jingle bells?

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