Desert Tango

New Mexico Lt. Governor candidate Joe Campos recently paid a visit to Gallup, and while he was here I spent some time following him around and listening what he had to say about issues that are important to the people in this area. To be honest, I wasn’t real happy with the images I made of him interacting with voters. To me they were really dry and they said nothing about who he is or what his personality is like.  So after a little brainstorming I came up with the idea for this portrait. Campos is the mayor of Santa Rosa, N.M., but he’s relatively new to state politics, and he is even less familiar with the issues that are important to the people of western New Mexico. I wanted my portrait to show him as a larger than life figure full of idealism; a superman of sorts ready to step in and conquer our problems with innovative ideas and solutions. I liked Joe, he was a genuinely nice guy, but the one thing about politicians that always gets me is how they think everything is so simple, like they can just step in and solve all these problems with the wave of the hand and flick of the pen. Unfortunately, things are not that simple, especially in this area where several different governments (that includes city, county, state, federal and several tribal governments) are trying to work together. That being said, it was great to see a candidate full of energy and passion and a genuine desire to make New Mexico a better place.

Here are some recent portraits; sort of a grab bag of stuff I’ve got within the past couple of months or so. Portraits can be some of my favorite images to shoot. I enjoy the challenge of making something interesting and compelling out of the mediocre situations that frequently come up with newspaper work. On the other hand, I love it when I get the opportunity choose location and time of day to really make the portrait sing.

New Mexico Magazine recently hired me to do a series of portraits of Navajo Code Talkers. For those not familiar with the Code Talkers, they did the United States a great service during World War II by using their native language to transmit codes that the Japanese were unable to break. This was huge, and it was not until 1968 that their great deeds were declassified by the U.S. government. A movie was made about their achievements in 2002 called Windtalkers.

Needless to say, the remaining Navajo Code Talkers are considered hero’s here on the Navajo Nation. I recently attended a ceremony of sorts where they will be building a museum to honor their achievements, but that’s a different post.

My assignment was to photograph three surviving Code Talkers; Willfred Billy who live in Farmington, NM; Frank Chee Willetto who lives in Crownpoint, NM; and Chester Nez who lives in Albuquerque, NM. It was a truly great assignment in that I was given as much time as I needed with them, which I feel resulted in some  compelling photos.

I forgot about this photo and was reminded of it today when it made the front of the A Photo A Day blog. It was shot during an assignment at a nursing home of kids singing Christmas carols to the residents. Hopefully the title doesn’t offend; it’s from the movie Donnie Darko.

This other picture was an impromptu portrait I shot of an older Navajo gentleman while on assignment in Thoreau, N.M.