Western Exposure: Photographs and the Frontier A Through the Lens lecture

David Taylor, 2008 Guggenheim Photography Fellow and professor of photography at New Mexico State University, will be the featured speaker in the next Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe lecture series. This free, public event will be held in the auditorium of the New Mexico History Museum.

Taylor is an Associate Professor at New Mexico State University, where he teaches photography. His photographs, installations and artist’s books have been exhibited nationally. Taylor’s work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Washington State Arts Commission, the El Paso Museum of Art and Fidelity Investments. His ongoing documentation of the U.S./Mexico border is supported by a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Since the 1850s many of the most recognized names in photography have focused their lenses in and on Santa Fe. Through their creative efforts they have documented a particular place and its visual history. They helped create that "place" and the mystique of Santa Fe. Photography has long been significant in the construction of notions of space and place, landscape and identity, and especially in Santa Fe, however malleable visual meaning may be, has helped define the geographical imagination. Curated by photographer and educator Krista Elrick and Palace of the Governor Curator of Photography, Mary Anne Redding, Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe, examines the history of Santa Fe through the visual record created by internationally respected photographers.