Give the country a chance . . . You will find yourself in unfamiliar territory at first, where the vastness is disquieting, the starkness leaves you empty. You will walk among rocks that tell time differently. Your skin will burn and your hair will lighten. You will find a waterhole and kneel with cupped hands. The reflection you see will not be of the person you once were. Neither is the land.

- Terry Tempest Williams
Terry Tempset Williams, Pieces of White Shell, Charles Scribners Sons publisher from the book
Ghost Ranch Land of Light: The Photographs of Janet Russek and David Scheinbaum, 1997

Terry Tempest Williams words reflect the experiences all the artists in this exhibit share - the southwest as a land of transformation, from its landscape and architecture, to the brilliant skies, and unending sense of space. The lives of each artist in this exhibition were transformed by their experiences here. No longer needing to look up to see the sky between the buildings, those who were on their way to somewhere else stopped and stayed. This ancient landscape with its arid climate and blue skies formed the people who have lived here, from the Anasazi and Native Americans, to early Spanish settlers and Anglos. The landscape, coupled with the natural architecture of adobe, rises and echoes the forms of the earth. Edward Weston, on his first trip through New Mexico, described it as a place, "where the heavens and the earth become one." This exhibit is a tribute to that notion and the people who shared it.

New Mexico, The Land of Enchantment, has been a mecca for artists from the early expeditionary photographers to contemporary photographers. In the 1930's and 40's many artists moved to Taos and Santa Fe and made the southwest their home. Eliot Porter came to Santa Fe in 1939, Laura Gilpin, originally from Colorado Springs, found Santa Fe while working on her project photographing the Rio Grande from its source to its end in 1945, and moved here in that year. Todd and Lucille Webb settled in Santa Fe in the 1960's to be near their life long friend, Georgia O'Keeffe. In the 1970's the Photography/History of Photography program at The University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, also attracted a large number of artists and historians, including Van Deren Coke and Beaumont Newhall. Many who came to study stayed. In the years that followed many others came and settled here - including Paul Caponigro, William Clift, Walter Chappell, Myron Wood, and others, and Santa Fe soon became known as a center for photography.

Like Georgia O'Keeffe others saw the west as a place of inspiration, creativity, and unending beauty - a place where real transformation can and does take place.

In the evening, with the sun at your back it looks like an ocean, like water. The color up there is different...the blue-green of the sage and the mountains, the wildflowers in bloom. Its a different kind of color from any I'd ever seen - there's nothing like that in north Texas or even Colorado. And its not just the color that attracted me, either. The world is so wide up there, so big.

- Georgia O'Keeffe

As Eliot Porter wrote in Eliot Porter's Southwest,

The west is a place of high adventure and romance. High arid lands and formidable still, it is beautiful desolate country with its sparse beauty, sharp outlines, cleanliness, and if it is permissible to speak of nature in those terms, it's unaffected simplicity.

We have had the good fortune to have known and worked with all the artists in this exhibition.  They and their vision have enriched our lives and this exhibition is dedicated to them.

Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Call for appointment and directions.

For more information contact:
Janet Russek, David Scheinbaum or Andra Russek
at 505-988-5116. or reach us by email at srltd(@)photographydealers.com.