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ever rest
I might have stayed a little longer to work some things out on this composition, but the (very) nearby dog sort of indicated that perhaps I had already overstayed my welcome.
(I have what I hope is a completely irrational fear that loose, barking/snarling dogs fully intend to eat one or more of my legs.)
Puerto de Luna, New Mexico
photographed 10.6.2024
privacy curtain
You know how sometimes you pull into a little town and it seems friendly and you think about stopping for lunch or a coffee so you can have little bit of time chatting with the locals? And then later you check VBRO because it seems like maybe you’d like to go back for a long weekend and you wonder what your options are?
This town is…not that sort of place.
Puerto de Luna, New Mexico
photographed 10.6.2024
i will never understand what’s left behind
I have looked inside a lot of abandoned places, and have photographed all of them. And I do not – and likely never will – understand why some things get left behind.
Did they intend to come back and get the rest of their things? Or did they just say fuck it and walk away from failure, hoping that maybe on another day in another town, they’d get a new coffee cup? Or whatever.
Puerto de Luna, New Mexico
photographed 3.24.2018
Spreading gradually outward
The immediate neighborhood of this church had barking dogs, abandoned vehicles, and a bright turquoise house.
The church itself had a fence with a perfectly-placed* weed and the morning sun.
Santa Inez Church
Puerto de Luna, New Mexico
photographed 3.25.2018
*Of course it was already stuck in the fence when we got there. It had been waiting on our arrival.
Old School
I got my start in the photography world a while back, spending a decade photographing roadside memorials (usually crosses) along highways. I still watch for the memorials, but rarely stop to photograph them.
This one, though, needed to be photographed.
My photographer pal and I met up in New Mexico last month – we had less than 24 hours to shoot before he headed off to take a class at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, so we were busy. We were drawn the tiny town of Puerto de Luna, visiting it two times during our very brief adventure. On our one New Mexico morning, we were on a bridge over the Pecos River and saw this cross down below, just above the water. And it seemed to need us to look at it from a more intimate distance.
The top of the cross’s arm is engraved with “Old School” but we will never know why. Such is the mysterious way of roadside memorials – they are at one intensely personal and completely mysterious.
Puerto de Luna, New Mexico
photographed 3.25.2018
One Day | One Image 