Pilgrimage: Good Friday in Northern New Mexico - Workshop With Gabriela Campos

 Via Santa Fe Workshops

Of the many beautiful and complex traditions in Northern New Mexico, one of the most unique is the annual Pilgrimage to Chimayo on Good Friday. Pilgrims travel on foot—some for hundreds of miles—from Santa Fe and other starting points to El Santuario de Chimayo, a small adobe chapel nestled in the Santa Cruz Valley. The road to El Santuario is filled with decisive moments: individuals are seen silhouetted against the sky, some with crosses on their backs; families walk together; the young and the old alike complete the journey. Upon their arrival, the travelers offer prayers and ask to receive the healing powers of the site. A tradition that is said to have spanned nearly 200 years, this is one of the largest pilgrimages in all of North America.

This April, join photojournalist and native New Mexican Gabriela Campos for this truly one-of-a-kind opportunity to document the Good Friday traditions and Pilgrimage to Chimayo. With her years of experience covering this cultural touchstone, Gabriela guides you to understand and visualize the essence of these traditions. You witness and photograph the events of the weekend up close and learn best practices for approaching subjects with respect. Gabriela also shares insights from her fieldwork and covers documentary storytelling techniques such as environmental portraiture, improvising and adapting to new photographic situations, and understanding cultural perspectives.

We begin this three-day workshop by visiting El Santuario de Chimayo, where we witness the devotions of thousands who make the trip annually. The processions begin around noon and provide ample opportunities for photographing subjects, cultural and religious details, and the beauty of the landscape and architecture surrounding the chapel.

Holy Week in New Mexico is famous not only for its pilgrimage but also for its car and Lowrider culture. Every year, artists, engineers, and car enthusiasts gather in Española for their own annual celebration, including a car show and Lowrider hopping competition. Participants experience this visually rich event firsthand and have the chance to meet Lowrider artists and create meaningful portraits and photographs during the festivities.

We balance our time in the field with conversation and an image review on the Santa Fe Workshops campus. Participants receive feedback from Gabriela and their peers and discuss editing their images to form a comprehensive narrative.

Running from Thursday morning through Saturday afternoon, this workshop offers a rare opportunity to immerse yourself in a rich cultural experience and create memorable and unparalleled imagery. Join Gabriela and Santa Fe Workshops for this special program to expand your photographic skills and deepen your understanding of this unique part of the world.

To register for this in-person spring course, click here.

About Gabriela Campos

Gabriela Campos was born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Always the observer, she picked up her father’s old Pentax camera her senior year of high school and has never stopped shooting. Gabriela’s camera became a tool to explore the culture, community, and traditions she grew up amongst.

Her work ranges from daily news coverage as a staff photojournalist for the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper, to more in-depth storytelling with her imagery documenting the people, towns, and traditions of the Southwest. Gabriela’s photos have been shown nationally and belong in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the New Mexico History Museum, and the Spencer Museum of Art. Her work has been published in The Guardian, The New York Times, High Country News, and numerous local and national publications. Gabriela’s photos are now shown amongst the work of some of the most influential photojournalists of the 20th and 21st centuries at the Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe.

Through the Lens 2024: Gabriela Campos

 Via The Santa Fe New Mexican

December 28, 2024

David Manzanares, Ghost Ranch field producer, looks out upon the expansive landscape over Abiquiu as a storm rolled in on Friday Mar. 8, 2024. Manzanares recollected on speaking with a location supervisor who contacted him back in October 2021 to pick his brain about potential spots for the film that would become Oppenheimer. This overlook was one of the selling points for the film crew to choose Abiquiu for filming.

Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican

A look at a few of staff photographer Gabriela Campos' favorite moments from 2024. 

(click for more photos)

Percy Edwards, from the Colville Confederated Tribe in Washington state, stands for a portrait before dancing at the Gathering of Nations at Tingley Coliseum at Expo New Mexico in Albuquerque, N.M. in April.

Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican

Jaime Gonzalez carries a large wooden cross down N.M. 503 for the annual Good Friday pilgrimage to the Santuario de Chimayo.

Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican

Images of Winter Are Frozen in Time

 Via Pasatiempo

November 29, 2024

Ida Wyman: Wrought Iron Design in Snow, New York City, 1947

In the 2023 photograph Ancestral Strength by Eugene Tapahe, four Indigenous women — Cayuse, Umatilla, Newe Sogobia, and Tséstho’e — stand side by side wearing brightly colored traditional garb, staring toward the sky behind the photographer. The stark winter beauty of the background in Wyoming’s Teton National Park further highlights the women’s projected power.

In the 1949 photograph Southern Pacific Steam Engine by John Dominis, a steam engine plows through a snowy landscape at Donner Pass, California.

Both images showcase forms of strength, but that’s not the tie that binds them. Both are part of Frozen in Time, an exhibition that Monroe Gallery of Photography describes as an “imaginative survey of compelling images.” It covers a range of human experiences, from the joy of exploration in George Silk’s 1946 shot Tourists Climb Fox Glacier in Tasman National Park, taken in New Zealand, to the ugly brutality of war in Tony Vaccaro’s White Death, Pvt. Henry Irving Tannebaum Ottre, taken in Belgium in 1945. 

It opens with a reception from 4-6 p.m. Friday, November 29. — Brian Sandford

details

Through January 19

Monroe Gallery of Photography

112 Don Gaspar Avenue

505-992-0800, monroegallery.com

New Exhibition "Frozen In Time" Opening and Plaza Holiday Lighting Will be Held Nov. 29

 The new exhibition "Frozen In Time", an imaginative survey of compelling images that reveal moments in history and the unseen and unexpected layers of our world in winter, opens with a public reception on Friday, November 29, from 4-6 pm. 

The City of Santa Fe’s annual Holiday Plaza Lighting ceremony will be held from 4:15-8 p.m. Nov. 29 on The Plaza.

Santa and Mrs. Claus will arrive by vintage fire truck at 5:45 p.m. City officials will switch on the lights at 6:30 p.m., and Santa Fe’s holiday season will officially begin.

Live Music will begin at 4:15 p.m.

Hot Cocoa & Cookies
Food Trucks
Countdown to Lighting

Reflections On An Exhibition

 

Grey Villet

Coma and Compassion, Nurse Judy Strickland, New York, 1977

November 17, 2024

Today is the final day for the exhibition "The Best Of Us". 

At the conclusion of every exhibit, we find ourselves discussing our impressions, thoughts, and the feedback we received from gallery visitors and collectors. This time, our reflections are deeply meaningful. 

"The Best Of Us" was an exhibition depicting the ideals and diversity of the human experience; through nearly 50 photographs which explored the characterization of extraordinary and everyday people who renew our faith that all things are possible and exemplify our ideals. People who exemplified the best traits of humanity:  kindness, empathy, compassion, consideration, patience, generosity, resilience, and the willingness to make a difference.

Opening on October 4, as America headed into the final stage of a Presidential election, the images in the exhibit emphasized the necessity of understanding and appreciating photojournalism.

There have been many exhibits that we wish could have run longer, and this another; it will be difficult to see it come to an end. Since the opening on October 4, the exhibit has been seen by many hundreds of viewers: young, old, tours, school groups, veterans, politicians, museum curators, collectors, the "famous", and even a few homeless. We have seen parents quietly explaining the situation behind a photograph to their children, we have seen people softly weeping, and the quiet of the gallery has occasionally been startled by someone gasping "Oh my God!" 

This exhibition has affirmed our steadfast belief in the power of a photograph. The introductory wall text included this quote from Maya Angelou: "Be sure you do not die without having done something wonderful for humanity”. 

We are so grateful for all of the participating photographers, so many of whom we have been privileged to have known know personally. For those who are no longer living with us, we thank their families for preserving their archives. For those still working, we honor your commitment and service to humanity.

 Thank you to all who visited the exhibit and thank you for your kind words and shared emotions. It has been deeply moving to see "The Best Of Us" personified in visitors to the exhibit.

“I cannot tell you where our history is leading us, or through what suffering, or into what era of war or peace. But wherever it is, I know people of good heart will be passing there.” -Carl Mydans, Life photojournalist

View "The Best of Us" and other past exhibits archived here.

Special Event: Art Heals - The Jingle Dress Project

Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to host a special fundraising event to support The Jungle Dress Project documentary. 

Photographer Eugene Tapahe's goal is to take the healing power of the Ojibwe jingle dress to the land, to travel, to dance and capture a series of images to document the spiritual places our ancestors once walked, and to unite and give hope to the world through art, dance and culture to help us heal. This special event will feature an exclusive preview of the Art Heals: The Jingle Dress Project short documentary with an opportunity to contribute towards the continuation of the film.

Fine art prints will be available with proceeds from sales supporting the project.

Friday, August 16, starting promptly at 6:30

RSVP essential by Monday, July 12; please use this link.  Seating is limited.

"Now, the project is bigger than I imagined. The support, the love, and the encouragement from all over the world is inspirational. It motivates Dion, Erin, JoAnni, Sunni and I through our difficulties while we travel on our photo expeditions. It has been beautiful, emotional, empowering and most importantly, healing. Don't miss this unique opportunity to experience the beauty and unity of our spiritual journey through compelling visuals and storytelling behind this historic endeavor" --Eugene Tapahe

Travel + Leisure readers selected Santa Fe as the #2 U.S. destination; "a photographer's dream"

 Via Travel & Leisure

July 9, 2024

Travel + Leisure readers selected Santa Fe as the #2 U.S. destination on the 2024 World’s Best Awards’ list of the, “15 Best Cities in the U.S.” for the second consecutive year! 

"This artsy Southwestern destination has ranked high on our list for nearly 20 years, and it’s not just because of the 320 days of sunshine it receives each year, though it certainly doesn’t hurt. “Santa Fe is like its own country within a country,” gushed one reader. “It’s such a unique blend of culture and history that you don’t see in the rest of the USA.” Another visitor called its downtown, with Pueblo-style buildings and independent galleries, “a photographer's dream and a shopper's delight.”

THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF TONY VACCARO

 Via Kevin Sessums Sums It Up

July 6, 2024

"I first discovered the extraordinary photographs of Tony Vaccaro a few years ago - and met the man himself - when I was in Santa Fe and Ali MacGraw, one of his subjects, took me to an exhibition of his work at the Monroe Gallery of Photography. I was both impressed by his fashion and celebrity photographs and moved by his WWII ones. I think he was unique in his bestriding both worlds with such grit and grace. There was a kind of wry bemusement to the fashion and celebrity ones but a wrenching intimacy to the war work. Last night the latest show of his photography opened at the Monroe Galley. I felt Tony’s presence in my conversation with his ten-year-old grandson Luke who was there with his family. The show runs until September 15th. If you are in Santa Fe, don’t miss it."

 --more here

Tony Vaccaro: The Pursuit of Beauty

 Via Musee Magazine

July 5, 2024

Tony Vaccaro died on December 28, 2022, eight days after celebrating his 100th birthday. Orphaned at age 6, as a young boy he immersed himself in studying classic European art and by age 10 had a box camera. He photographed WWII from a soldier’s perspective, documenting his personal witness to the brutality of war. After carrying a camera across battlefields, he become one the most sought-after photographers of his day, eventually working for virtually every major publication: Flair, Look, Life, Venture, Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, Quick, Newsweek, and many more. Vaccaro turned the trauma of his youth into a career seeking beauty. Tony’s transition from war and its aftermath was a deliberate one as an antidote to man’s inhumanity to man.



more here: Monroe Gallery

Lynsey Addario at the 2024 Santa Fe International Literary Festival

Via The Santa Fe International Literary Festival

 On the Big Stage with Lynsey Addario

May 18, 2024, 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

Tickets here

LYNSEY ADDARIO is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir It’s What I Do and a celebrated photojournalist covering conflicts in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Darfur, South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She regularly photographs for The New York Times, National Geographic, and Time and has been named by American Photo Magazine one of the five most influential photographers of the past 25 years. Addario was the official photographer for the Nobel Peace Center’s 10th Peace Prize Exhibition and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur “genius” fellowship and the Overseas Press Club’s Olivier Rebbot Award for best photographic reporting from abroad in magazines and books. She was also part of the New York Times team to win the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. In 2018 Penguin Press published her first solo collection of photography, Of Love and War. She lives in London.

Featured Book: It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario

Ways of Seeing: Four Photographic Collections

 Via The New Mexico Museum of Art

January 18, 2024

Art collectors are often said to have “a good eye” for pictures, but what does that really mean? This selection of photographs from three collections recently donated to the museum and one promised gift illustrates a variety of approaches to choosing works of art and assembling a collection. United by a passion for photography, each collector brings a distinctive sensibility to the undertaking. Artist Jamie Brunson and her former husband Mark Levy gravitated to large color photographs of the 1990s that reflect their interest in social justice and meditation. Photographer and photo dealer Don Moritz amassed a large collection of that included a group of prints by David Michael Kennedy. New Yorker W.M. Hunt was attracted to images of people whose eyes are not readily visible and searched internationally for decades to build a unique holding on that theme. Santa Fe collectors Caroline Burnett and her late husband William chose images that moved them deeply, ultimately creating a collection largely of modernist photographs from the mid-twentieth century. On view will be suites of work from each collector, including photographs by Ruth Bernhard, Edward Burtynsky, Harry Callahan, Adam Fuss, David Michael Kennedy, Minor White, and more.

Opening Saturday, January 20

At the 1917 Plaza Building 

New Mexico Museum of Art

(505) 476-5072
Plaza: 107 West Palace

Santa Fe, NM

 nmartmuseum.org

Related article in the Santa Fe New Mexican Pasatiempo: Photography in NMMoA's new exhibit reflects the eye of the beholder

Through the lens 2023: Gabriela Campos

 Via The Santa Fe New Mexican

December 28, 2023

Gallery Photographer Gabriela Campos shares some of her favorite images from 2023.

Kelly Ludeking, a Minnesota ironmonger, spins molten iron while fellow artists throw liquid iron onto a plywood wall behind him during the biennial Iron Tribe gathering March 2 in Las Vegas, N.M. The gathering, started by Highlands University fine arts professor David Lobdell in 2001, has become a can’t-miss event, particularly for professors and students in the West and Great Plains.

Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican

Full gallery here.

The City Of Santa Fe 2023 COVID-19 Memorial Day Monday, March 6, 2023

Gabriela Campos

A nursing station in the Frost 19 unit, Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, Santa Fe, NM, December, 2020

Via The City of Santa Fe

Join Us For The City Of Santa Fe 2023 COVID-19 Memorial Day

12 Noon Monday, March 6, 2023, On The Santa Fe Plaza

The City of Santa Fe warmly invites all community members to attend the 2023 COVID-19 Memorial Day at 12 p.m. on Monday, March 6, 2023, on the Santa Fe Plaza. 

In February 2021, the Governing Body unanimously adopted a resolution designating the first Monday in March as COVID-19 Memorial Day. This event is held to remember all who have passed away, fallen ill, or who continue to suffer from the impact of COVID-19, as well as to honor essential workers. 

Citywide, Santa Feans are urged to participate in the memorial by observing a moment of silence at 12 p.m., and by adding their voices or noise to a moment of appreciation for essential workers at 12:01 p.m. (ringing bells at houses of worship, honking car horns, rounds of applause, etc.) 

Click here to download a shareable PDF of the event flyer.

Related: Ashley Gilbertson's Photographs In The NY Times: "Three Years Into Covid, We Still Don’t Know How To Talk About It"

A show celebrating acclaimed photographer Tony Vaccaro at Santa Fe’s Monroe Gallery of Photography (112 Don Gaspar) can be viewed for five more days—through Jan. 29

 Via The Santa Fe Reporter

January 25, 2023

Honoring Vaccaro

Speaking of countdowns, a show celebrating acclaimed photographer Tony Vaccaro at Santa Fe’s Monroe Gallery of Photography (112 Don Gaspar) can be viewed for five more days—through Jan. 29. Monroe mounted two exhibitions—here and a New York pop-up last month—to honor Vaccaro’s 100th birthday; the photographer died on Dec. 28, just eight days after his centennial, which he celebrated in New York with friends at a surprise birthday dinner. 

A New York Times obituary recounts how Vaccaro became a war photographer in World War II—also the subject of a 2016 HBO documentary. After the war, he transitioned and began to make fashion, travel and celebrity photographs for the country’s leading magazines. 

Those celebrities included Georgia O’Keeffe, whom Life magazine assigned Vaccaro to photograph in 1960. O’Keeffe expected a more famous photographer and at first refused to pose: “To win her over, Mr. Vaccaro cooked a meal and made a picnic lunch. When the weather turned too windy for the picnic, he gave her a plate of Swiss cheese as she sat in the back of his car. And when she playfully peered through a hole in a piece of the cheese, Mr. Vaccaro went into action,” the obituary reads. His other famous subjects included John F. Kennedy, Pablo Picasso and Sophie Loren, to name a few. 

This quote from Vaccaro accompanies Monroe’s information on the exhibition: “We call each other German, French, Italian. There is no Italian blood. There is no French blood. It’s human blood. On this Earth there is one humanity. Let’s do something about it. Let’s live! In a way, photography was my way of telling the world, ‘We have better things to do than to kill ourselves.’”

Monroe Gallery of Photography 2022 in Review

 

David Butow: Brink

Gallery talk

Exhibition link

Ed Kashi: Abandoned Moments

Gallery talk

Exhibition link

The LIFE Photographers

Exhibition video

Exhibition link

Imagine A World Without Photojournalism

Gallery discussion with photojournalists Nina Berman and David Butow

Exhibition link

The Legacy of Bill Eppridge

Exhibition video

Exhibition link

The Tony Vaccaro Centennial Exhibition

Exhibition video

Exhibition link

We look forward to seeing you in 2023!

Gabriela Campos, born and raised in Sante Fe, New Mexico, began cultivating her photography skills in high school and her camera is now a vehicle for telling powerful visual stories

 

Via Culturelines

Gabriela Campos, born and raised in Sante Fe, New Mexico, began cultivating her photography skills in high school. Seduced by the magic of the dark room film process, Campos slowly (and intentionally) transformed a creative outlet into her lifeblood. Her camera is now a vehicle for telling powerful visual stories, building community, connecting with strangers and showcasing the people and stunning natural beauty of her home state. As a freelance photographer, her incredible work has been featured in several noteworthy publications, including The Guardian, High Country News, Al Jazeera, VICE, The Daily Beast and various local publications. She’s also exhibited in Washington, D.C. alongside fellow photographer Nathaniel Tetsuro Poalinelli. 

I connected with Campos to explore the genesis of her career, her creative vision and the importance of being a homegrown creative. 

When did you know you wanted to be a photographer?

Gabriela Campos: I first fell in love my senior year of high school. I switched to a new high school and they had this program where you could take photography classes at the community college. I was always interested in [photography] because my dad used to be into [photography]. I took black and white number one, got my dad's old Pentax camera and I experienced the beauty and magic of the dark room — where you just watch something come out of darkness. From that first class, I was hooked.

Why is it important to tell New Mexican stories?

Gabriela Campos: Some people are always seeking to go outside of themselves, and they don't see the potential of their home. There are so many culturally significant things in New Mexico. I'm going through a phase where New Mexico is very much a muse. I am so inspired by the people, the places, the textures, the landscape. It's important to tell the stories that you feel passionately about.

How do you build trust when you go into a new space?

Gabriela Campos: There are two different ways that I approach it. For [The Santa Fe New Mexican] newspaper, I have to be thrown into new situations every single day and feel I can create that sort of intimacy. I show up and I'm interested, and I'm curious. I like to ask people questions. I feel genuine interest goes a long way. Because, it's not often that people get to show off their worlds. Sometimes it's about talking to people. Sometimes I go on assignment and I take photos for the first five minutes, but then people just want to sit down and tell me their story, what's really going on in their lives and the worst of their worlds. 

Have you learned a lot from other creatives?

Gabriela Campos: I learn a lot from watching other photographers work. I've been in situations where there's five [or] six photographers and we're all covering the same event. Everybody approaches it a little differently. It's fun to see if people are throwing themselves directly in there, if they're standing far back in the corner trying to get environmental things or if they're trying to get close. I try to remind myself to touch on all the things. Sometimes, I have to say, “step back, show a little bit more, there's more to the story than just people.” 

Why is natural lighting your preferred environment?

Gabriela Campos: When you step into somebody's world, you don't often have the luxury of being able to orchestrate all the details. It's about working with what you have, because then you're never reliant on having a flash or a strobe; you're equipped to do what you need to do anywhere if you just train your eye to seek out that natural light. There's nothing more beautiful, [when] it hits in that perfect way.

What’s better, color or black and white?

‍Gabriela Campos: Sometimes colors can be a little bit distracting. Certain colors, like reds and yellows, are really flashing and people are drawn to them. But maybe you're drawn to it for the wrong reasons. Maybe what I like about the frame is the expression of the person, the shapes, the lines or the way the light hits something. There is definitely a place for colors, because sometimes I'm really attracted to the vibrancy of something. 

Could you ever imagine sitting behind a desk?

 Gabriela Campos: No, I always wanted to be interacting with people and entering people's worlds; photography is the most absolute, ideal situation for that. Every day I get to be something different. Some days, I'm a firefighter. Some days, I'm a doctor. Sometimes, I drive an Impala around. It lets me see life from [different] perspectives. 

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EXHIBITION REVIEW: IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT PHOTOJOURNALISM AT MONROE GALLERY

 Via Musee Magazine

August 15, 2022

Written by Amanda Karmolinski

Copy Edited by Chloë Rain

Photo Edited by Yanting Chen

The Monroe Gallery of Photography in Sante Fe is celebrating its 20th anniversary with the opening of the major exhibition, “Imagine A World Without Photojournalism.” This exhibition highlights photojournalists spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, from World War II to the recent January Insurrection. These images are timeless; they showcase the constantly changing political climate- from when they were captured to today’s society. Their message speaks volumes. This display of photojournalism documents the way that events in our lifetime have an everlasting effect, leaving the viewer with the truth that “we are living history”.     (Click for full article)

Capturing The Front Lines Through The Lens

 

Via The Albuquerque Journal

July 17, 2022

Two of the millions of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, this woman and her son leave for Poland and a completely unpredictable future. (Courtesy of David Butow)

From the Depression years to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a human through line weaves among heroism, deprivation, power and oppression.

Open at the Monroe Gallery of Photography, “Imagine a World Without Photojournalism” explores those repeated connections through a roster of 24 photojournalists and 44 prints.

The photographs cover an arc of 20th and 21st century social and political change, from the battles of World War II to the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s, from the Dust Bowl to the devastation of climate change, from the frenzy of presidential elections to the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.

“I think of it as a survey of our 20 years in Santa Fe,” gallery co-owner Michelle Monroe said. “We’re reinforcing the power of being educated by a free press. We’re trying to draw parallels between past events and current events.”

David Butow’s haunting portrait of a Ukrainian woman and her son leaving home for an unknown future in Poland reflects the uncertainty of migrants everywhere.

“It’s the heroism of every day people,” gallery co-owner Sidney Monroe said.

“He was in Ukraine covering the exodus when millions of people were trying to evacuate. He just returned from Uvalde, Texas (the site of the latest school massacre, where a gunman killed 21 people). He was also has covered the aftermath of other tragic school shootings.”

Margaret Bourke-White’s 1936 image of a line of African American flood victims lining up for food and clothing beneath a sign touting the “American Way” reveals her ironic and subversive intent. Similar lines formed during the ravages of COVID-19.

Steve Schaprio’s “Stop Police Killings, Selma March, 1965” could have been taken at a Black Lives Matter march.

“It’s never changed; the concept of an armed occupier,” Michelle Monroe said. “They can’t manage power responsibly.”

A photo of floating Zanzibar primary school students holding empty water jugs leads to the treatment of women, particularly in Muslim countries.

Daily life in the Zanzibar Archipelago centers around the sea, yet the majority of girls who inhabit the islands never acquire even the most fundamental swimming skills. Conservative Islamic culture and the absence of modest swimwear have compelled community leaders to discourage girls from swimming. The rate of drowning on the African continent is the highest in the world. The swimming lessons challenge a patriarchal system that discourages women from pursuing things other than domestic tasks.

“It’s a through line to the oppression of women,” Michelle Monroe said.

Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener captured the iconic photograph of a lone man standing in front of a column of tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in 1989 Beijing.

Widener was one of just a handful of photojournalists at the site.

“There were very few that got out with their film,” Michelle Monroe said.

“He hid it and let them take other canisters in his bag to get out,” Sidney said.

“That image is completely forbidden in China now,” he continued. “That whole movement has been erased.”

‘Imagine a World Without Photojournalism’

WHEN: Through Sept. 18

WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe

INFO: monroegallery.com

The human condition through the lens

Via Pasatiempo

By Brian Sandford

July 15, 2022

The 44 photos adorning the walls at the Monroe Gallery of Photography offer an unvarnished look at the human condition — tracing an emotional range from tender love to the fallout of hatred.

Many showcase the human spirit’s perseverance through challenges or trauma, while others are provocative reminders of recent history that some people would rather ignore or forget. That’s part of the point of Imagine a World Without Photojournalism, an exhibit that runs through Sept. 18 and includes a selection of art that has been shown throughout the gallery’s 20-year history.

The Monroe Gallery’s exhibit represents about a century of photojournalism. Gallery co-owners and spouses Sid and Michelle Monroe say the exhibit’s photographs were selected based on “individual universal relevance,” with each representing an important subject of social and political history.

In a way, records of historical events were created by painters for hundreds of years, if perhaps with less fidelity to the truth. As a result, accounts of historical events could come years — even centuries — later. The invention of photography in 1826 changed that, opening the door to real-time documentation of events and the work of photographers such as Mathew Brady, who defined our notion of the in-between moments of the Civil War.

Whitney Curtis, Rashaad Davis, 23, backs away as St. Louis County police officers approach him with guns drawn and eventually arrest him in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 11, 2014; courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography

Modern photojournalism, though, began in the mid-1920s with the invention of the Leica, a portable camera using film able to capture movement.

Some photojournalists have gained fame for their work, such as Robert Capa, who documented war and whose photo of chaos on Omaha Beach in France on D-Day is part of the Monroe exhibit. Others are lesser known, despite producing iconic images, such as Eddie Adams. His name might not ring a bell, but his 1968 photo of the street execution of a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon is an iconic symbol of the brutality of war.

Some of those photos might have been viewed differently had they been taken recently, Sid says.

Human condition on display at photography exhibit

Nina Berman, Afghan Woman with Diploma, Kabul, Afghanistan, 1998; courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography

“One of the challenges journalists are facing is just the outright denial of reality,” he says, adding that some visitors get defensive when confronted with uncomfortable truths.

At least one of the images in the exhibit has created a stir elsewhere: A 2019 photo by Grant Baldwin was removed from a public museum in North Carolina in June. It depicts two men kissing at a Pride parade in Charlotte, North Carolina, while people in the background cheer and take pictures.

County Manager Kim Eagle ordered that the photo be removed from the Gaston County Museum, a move backed by at least two county commissioners there.

Grant Baldwin, Charlotte, North Carolina, Pride Parade, Aug. 18, 2019; courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography

While some images are divisive, Sid says, others are noteworthy for their unifying qualities. He cited as an example the iconic World War II shot of six Marines raising a flag at Iwo Jima, which is included in the Monroe Gallery’s exhibit. Joe Rosenthal captured the image on the Japanese island in 1945.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, “a photographer happened to capture these firefighters who took a flag off a boat that was docked near the towers, and they were putting it up on a column that had survived,” he says. “And then it was immediately seized upon, like, ‘Oh, this is a rally moment for America after 9/11.’ Well, we need [calls to rally]. Because most of these situations require sacrifice. Ukraine requires sacrifice. World War II required sacrifice. And so in order to galvanize the effort, you need that imagery to bring you all together.”

Selecting images for the exhibit wasn’t an easy task.

“You could do an entire museum, like, three floors and 200 pictures, and still not really tell the full story” of photojournalism, Michelle says.

Human condition on display at photography exhibit

Hans Runesson, A woman hitting a neo-Nazi with her handbag (Vaxjo, Sweden, 1985); courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography

Part of that story is simply the power of an image viewed on a white wall, not accompanied by distractions on a computer screen.

“I often ask people in the gallery, ‘I wonder who’s benefiting from us thinking that we can’t be friends even though we think differently?’” she says. “As I like to say to my kids, don’t be an unpaid intern for someone. Because that’s what we’re doing for those people that are benefiting from separating us. We haven’t even examined how we really feel.”

The Monroes don’t aim to influence how others feel, they say.

“There’s never an agenda to the exhibit in terms of a viewpoint,” Sid says. “This is what happened. This is history.” 

Ashley Gilbertson, Officer Eugene Goodman: The Storming of The Capitol (Washington, D.C., Jan. 6, 2021); courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography

Details

▼ Imagine a World Without Photojournalism

▼ Through Sept. 18

▼ Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar Ave.

▼ 505-992-0800, monroegallery.com

▼ Also, “Threats to Photojournalism,” a panel program with photographers Nina Berman and David Butow, 5:30 p.m. July 22, at the gallery or via Zoom. RSVP required

 

Monroe Gallery presents the exhibition "Imagine a world without photojournalism"

 Via Visura

June 29, 2022

For 20 years, Monroe Gallery of Photography has presented exhibitions championing the critical work of photojournalists.

IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT PHOTOJOURNALISM

Exhibit Celebrates Monroe Gallery's 20 Years in Santa Fe

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce a major exhibition celebrating the Gallery’s 20th anniversary in Santa Fe. Opening on Friday, July 1, “Imagine a World Without Photojournalism” is a multi-photojournalist presentation of news events of the 20th and 21st Centuries.  A public reception will occur on Friday, July 1, from 5 – 7 pm. The exhibition will continue through September 18, 2022.

A special program with gallery photojournalists Nina Berman and David Butow will be held on Friday, July 22 at 5:30 PM, RSVP required, please contact the Gallery for information.

Full article here.