Blog Archives
…and His face was turned toward the sun
Jesus had lost his hands (I don’t know what happened), but at least he could face into the sun and watch the dying of the day.
Immaculate Conception Cemetery
Alamogordo, New Mexico
photographed 12.11.2025
information
I’ve just gotten back from a week of photography in New Mexico and El Paso.
I went primarily for a photo workshop at White Sands National Park; the night before it started, I went out to a nearby cemetery to re-learn how to use a camera that’s not my everyday one. A couple of local cemeteries seemed like good locations for my self-guided lessons.
Anyway, I sure did like the lower-case r that was hanging out with a whole line of upper-case ones.
Monte Vista Cemetery
Alamogordo, New Mexico
photographed 12.11.2025
marbled
This one hits hard – a simple concrete cross with glass marbles pressed into it. It made me think about the grief that led to its construction: the making of the form for the concrete, mixing up the concrete, some little kid give the important job of sorting marbles by color, pouring the concrete into the form, carefully pressing the marbles in, moving the finished cross to the cemetery, placing it in the ground…all of those scenes are vivid to me, as vivid as though I had witnessed them.
Trujillo, New Mexico
photographed 11.11.2025
fiddle
We didn’t stay long at this cemetery: right after we got there, a group of three or four people pulled up nearby. Normally this wouldn’t have bothered me, but one of the group, an elderly woman, walked over to a set of headstones and was sobbing. It started to seem like we were intruding on something that too private for us to be a part of…it was time to leave.
The woman spoke to me, asking, “Do you have people here?” I told her no, and offered my condolences on her loss and her sorrow. She told me that her family had brought her to the cemetery “for the last time” so she could say goodby to her parents and her son. She was moving from Las Vegas to Tucumcari and would be “too far away” to ever come back.
Tucumcari is 76 miles away.
Trujillo, New Mexico
photographed 11.11.2025
One Day | One Image 