Contemporary photography in Santa Fe.

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.

The city's most prominent and visible photography gallery is that of Andrew Smith, located near the heart of downtown Santa Fe. Smith handles the work of both well-known historic and contemporary photographers, including several who are either locally based or produce images of New Mexico and the desert Southwest. Iconic images by the likes of Karsh, Eisenstadt, Cartier-Bresson, Leibovitz and Penn can be found in Smith's gallery, which also does a brisk business in Curtis photogravures. Important and interesting photographic work can also be found in and around Santa Fe at the Alene Lapides Gallery, Cline LewAllen Contemporary, the Gerald Peters Gallery (now in the process of building a new 32,000 square-foot facility), Turner-Carroll Gallery and the Linda Durham Gallery. The last, located south of Santa Fe in the village of Galisteo, represents the hybrid photo-based work of both Holly Roberts and ParkeHarrison.

A small commercial complex on Garcia Street on Santa Fe's east side, is home to the Photo-Eye Bookstore and Photo-Eye Gallery - both establishments owned and operated by Rixon Reed. The bookstore is a respected resource for all manner of photo-related literature, and is also the home office of the Photo-Eye mail order catalog. Reed relocated his business to Santa Fe from Austin, Texas in 1991, and in 1995 opened his gallery, which is now also the local representative for the Platinum Collection. Photo-Eye has shown the work of Jock Sturges, Chris Rainier, David Gibson, John Cohen and Keith Carter. Reed describes Santa Fe as having a four-month art "season" (roughly June through September), and notes that "there are enough people coming through town off-season to make it worthwhile being open, but if you don't have something going on outside of Santa Fe you're in deep trouble. in terms of the gallery market, we'd probably be better off in a major city, but it's a lifestyle thing and we're glad to be here."

Although it claims a relatively small year-round population of approximately 60,000, Santa Fe is home to an unusually large and diverse arts community, which includes two publishers of world-class photography books. The newcomer is Arena Editions, owned and operated by photo historian, author and now publisher, James Crump. Crump studied with Parry at UNM before moving to Santa Fe, and his first two projects - Robert Stivers: Photographs and Adam Fuss (the latter with a major essay by Parry) are attracting significant attention. Crump states that "We're going to be working on books that will expand the discourse on photography with interesting writing and new ideas that challenge the whole modernist idea of what the photo book is. Our books will include interpretive analysis by key writers - not just historians and critics, but poets and fiction writers as well." Future monographs on the work of Bruce Cratsley, J. John Priola and McDermott and McGough, are forthcoming, as well as a collaboration with Parry titled Paris Crime Album, and a book of the 1925-1935 travel albums of George Platt Lynes, Monroe Wheeler and Glenway Wescott. Crump apprenticed in the book trade with the esteemed publisher Jack Woody, whose Twin Palms imprint has been a standard-bearer for beautifully conceived and executed photography books. Woody's small, prestigious operation maintains a low-key presence locally, but has earned an international reputation for the quality and integrity of its product.

Megan Fox came to Santa Fe in 1990 to become the first director of photography at the Gerald Peters Gallery. She left Peters in 1994 and opened her own space in 1995, and though she now exhibits a significant percentage of non-photographic media, she remains an eloquent spokesperson for photography. Citing New Mexico's historic connections, Fox believes that many people come to Santa Fe expecting to find photography. She adds, however, that "Despite the strong foundation in traditions and the connection to the international world of photography, collectors looking for photography and artists looking for galleries are often surprised at how little there actually is to be seen at any given time. Likewise, some people are surprised to see what I'm doing here, but I'm trying to show photography in context - how it relates with other media." Fox has shown the work of Witkin, David Levinthal, Jean Kallina, Robert Stivers and Lynn Davis in her gallery.

In addition to running her own business, Fox coordinated the 1997 ART Santa Fe contemporary art fair, which took place on the same crazed mid-July weekend that saw the openings of SITE Santa Fe's second biennial, the O'Keeffe Museum, and the annual Photo Santa Fe fair. ART Santa Fe '97 had a strong showing of photography, in addition to the 25 galleries and private dealers exhibiting across town at Photo Santa Fe (presented every summer since 1993 by the Stephen Cohen Gallery of Los Angeles). Another annual summer event is the Kodak-sponsored Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, which brings dozens of aspiring photographers to the city to hone their skills under the tutelage of notable image-makers from a variety of disciplines.

The most venerable institution of Santa Fe's fine arts scene is the 80-year-old Museum of Fine Arts, just off the downtown plaza. The MoFA has significant holdings in photography and regularly presents photo exhibitions overseen by curator Steve Yates. Recent offerings have included "After Modernism in Photography" (with work by local artists Michael Berman, Paula Hocks and Bernard Plossu) and "New Histories in Photography," which featured a rare viewing of Joseph Nicephore Niepce's seminal 1826 image, View from his Window at La Gras. Santa Fe's most significant contemporary art venture is doubtlessly the non-profit kuensthalle-style SITE Santa Fe. SITE Santa Fe began its existence as a biennial exhibition, but has grown over the past four years to include year-round visual arts programming, literary events and community outreach. Photography and video have been prominent in both SITE Santa Fe's 1995 and 1997 biennials. "Photoworks: When Pictures Vanish," an exhibition of Sigmar Polke's large-scale photos, had a four-month run at SITE in 1996, and a retrospective of the work of Sarah Charlesworth will be on view through January 1998. Co-curated by SITE Director/Curator Louis Grachos and Susan Fischer Sterling of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., "Sarah Charlesworth: Retrospective" is the first comprehensive overview of the artist's career, encompassing 47 works from the years 1978 through 1995. It will also be the first exhibition originated by SITE Santa Fe to tour the country after its local debut.

SITE Santa Fe is but one highly visible aspect of what is certainly the most significant arts-related development to take place in Santa Fe in recent years - the enormous impact of art patrons John and Anne Marion. The Marions, who live part-time in Santa Fe, have transformed the face of the local art scene: besides providing the seed money for SITE Santa Fe, the Marions created the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and are funding the forthcoming Anne and John Marion Center for the Photographic Arts at the College of Santa Fe - part of an $11 million, 100,000-square-foot visual arts complex that is currently in its first phase of construction. James Enyeart, formerly of the George Eastman House/International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, New York, is the director of the Marion Center. The Marion Center's mission statement, authored by Enyeart, anticipates "the establishment of a new paradigm for the basic education of artists in a society where the need for creativity has surpassed conventional values placed on specialization." In addition to the typical classrooms, faculty offices and lecture halls, the facility will contain darkrooms, digital media labs, preservation and finishing studios, the Beaumont Newhall Library, photographer Bela Kalman's personal library, and a small "study collection" of original prints. Enyeart describes the center's curriculum as being "triangulated," with its emphases on studio, history and museum/gallery studies.

In addition to all the happenings at the College of Santa Fe, the Santa Fe Community College is currently in the early stages of developing its own $9.5 million arts facility. While there is great excitement over this unprecedented boom in arts education resources, there are questions and concerns as well. A recent cover story in Santa Fe's weekly free newspaper, the Santa Fe Reporter, was titled "Art School Daze: Santa Fe Colleges Might Find It Takes More Than Fancy Buildings," and some worry about the influence of the Marions - the thought being, "Okay, they're giving all of this to us, but what do they want from us?" Enyeart states, "I consider the Marions to be unusual and exceptional philanthropists. It may not be part of the public record, but the Marions do not collect photography - and yet, they're building a major center here because that extends the nature of contemporary art and the level of quality they can affect in Santa Fe. They believe that the arts are a major aspect of what makes a great community. If anybody's waiting for the other shoe to drop, they're going to be waiting for a very long time." In a time where the National Endowment for the Arts faces near constant challenges to its very existence, Santa Fe finds itself in an enviable position. With generous private donors pouring millions into local institutions, Santa Fe will certainly be a facility-rich town, but only time will tell if it will be able to attract the kind of talented educators and students responsible for UNM's enviable reputation.

Santa Fe's photography community is heir to an embarrassment of riches, not the least being its existing pool of human resources. A necessarily incomplete list of artists living, working, exhibiting and teaching in the area includes Walter Chappell, Herb Lotz, Witkin, Herb Ritts, Patrick Nagatani, Betty Hahn, Roberts, Stivers, Victor Masayesva, Jr., Barbara Van Cleve, Jo Whaley, David Michael Kennedy, Kalman, Todd Adams, Ted Kuykendal, Thomas Barrow, ParkeHarrison, Miguel Gandert, Ed Rainey and Rubenstein - in addition to numerous emerging talents who have yet to gain recognition. With artists, patrons, commercial galleries, museums, non-profit spaces, publishers, art fairs and institutions of higher learning all packed into this picturesque small town, the buzz is almost palpable on a good day - and Santa Fe typically has more good days than most. As to whether Santa Fe's arts community will be able to make the most of all of its vast potential and burgeoning material resources, only time will tell.

DAVID CLEMMER is a writer and musician living in Santa Fe, whose work has appeared in THE Magazine, the New Art Examiner, Art Nexus, the Santa Fe Reporter and Flash Art. For the past three years he has worked at the Gerald Peters Gallery, where he is a gallery director specializing in photography and contemporary art.