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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
The tiny memorial
Maybe you knew that I got my photographic start by shooting roadside crosses (or other memorials). I did it for ten years, and became adept at spotting them. The last one I shot for the project was around 2006 or so, when it seemed like I done all the roadside cross work I wanted to do.
Sometimes, I still do shoot them, like last year when I did a post on the series of crosses between the town where I work and the city where I live.
So, while I do still notice them, I don’t notice them to the point of stopping.
Until this one. I’ve gone by this spot a hundred times and never saw it. And, in fact, might not have ever seen it but the Patient Spouse spotted it and took me out to see it. And even with him saying, “It’s right there. There. TO THE LEFT.” it still took me a while to see it.
Ransom Canyon, Texas
photographed 4.22.2017
