Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe

Santa Fe, NM—The Palace of the Governors is partnering with Santa Fe Community College on the exhibition, Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe, as their contribution to Santa Fe’s celebration of its 400th anniversary. The photographic exhibition opens November 21, 2008 and runs through October 25, 2009.

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.

Both documentary and fine art photographers were drawn to the region’s land, its peoples, the regional architecture, and the quality of light found nowhere else in the world. The project will showcase outstanding photographs that reveal the aesthetic excellence of the artists working in Santa Fe. While the images document the city, they have also been used, historically, as part of the marketing of the Santa Fe image and as a draw to other artists.