No. 63 October 2006
The authoritative source on early churches in New Jersey

ISSN 1543-3250

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significance of a port cochere

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Sacred Places of the Southwest

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Paterson - GOP headquarters

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South River Methodist

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Feature of the month

Anasazi ruins

Nine years ago I had to cancel a planned photographic expedition to the southwest because of the press of business. To keep myself occupied I began to photograph the old churches of Hunterdon County; a minor project, I expected, but one which has evolved into six books and this website. But the pull of the Four Corners (where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet) never waned, and indeed I have been back several times in the intervening years to photograph the ruins of the Anasazi and the early Spanish missions. Last month I did so again. Those readers interested only in the churches of New Jersey will have to indulge me in my primary focus this month—I have offered you 62 issues of local churches so you will (I hope) be tolerant of this brief excursion into another part of the country's historic architecture.

Some of the cliff dwellings, towers, kivas and other structures, all erected between about 900 and 1270 AD, are now National Monuments, with all the crowds, manicured trails, and restorations that usually implies. Others are obscure, undocumented and accessible only with strenuous effort, their locations disguised by loose geographic labels—Mancos pueblo, San Juan County granary, Southern Utah kiva. But several of them have become ubiquitous—Ansel Adams' White House Ruin is the best-known example. The image on the left was taken of a small ruin about a mile up-canyon from the iconic "house on fire" image in Mule Canyon that has been made into a widely-disseminated poster. Kokopelli, the hump-backed flute player etched in the sandstone walls throughout the area, has become a trademark, it seems, for anything southwestern. Although the National Park Service's rangers get it right, elsewhere there is a cultivated air of mystery about the Anasazi, even though it is well known where the ancient peoples went when they abruptly abandoned these structures late in the thirteenth century.

I return every few years because it is a target-rich environment for a photographer, though the field has been plowed many times, and by better photographers than me. But there is still work to be done. There is no need to produce illustrations that would work for an archeology text, or another souvenir book for tourists, or a calendar of great scenes from the southwest. I have little desire to create an inventory of every remaining great pueblo, if indeed that were possible. But the differences between my approach to the churches of New Jersey and the remains of ancient puebloan walls, some more than a thousand years old, is much deeper. I have often remarked that a church is merely the excuse I point my camera in a specific direction—it is not the reason for the photograph. That was initially true, but in my desire to document the state's eighteenth and nineteenth century religious architecture, I have had to place the need for a good representation of what the structure looks like above other considerations. In Chaco, Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, Canyon de Chelly, Cedar Mesa, Comb Wash, and the Ute Mountain Tribal Park there was no such constraint. My purpose was, above all, to make a satisfying image. It has taken me almost 30 years to understand that.

One of the measures of the maturation of my vision can be seen in the different images I have made over the years of the same sites. Here I have paired an image I made of the Cliff Palace ruin at Mesa Verde a few years ago with one taken last month. This shot is quite informative about what the site looks like, is more appropriate to illustrate a travel brochure or calendar. The image gives one a sense of what the village was like— even something of its size and scale, although there is little sense of how it is tucked into an alcove on the face of a canyon wall. It certainly offers a sense of the engineering achievement of those stone age people who, without mortar, erected four and five story buildings that have lasted a thousand years. But it not now the kind of photography I want to do.

The image here was taken of the same ruin (it's out of the frame to the left in that older shot) . Other than a little burning and dodging, both images are untouched. Some may prefer the image above for reasons other than the additional information it contains, but it is not as good a photograph as this, to my eye. It is too documentary, too lifeless, even clinical. Here there is a drama, a sense of something about to happen that I find appealing. You may shrug with indifference, or use a different vocabulary to describe an image; I often struggle to express why I like one image and not another. Here I believe it is the shapes and the contrast of light and shadow areas, not the information, that is the key.

This small building is part of a multi-structure ruin known as Moonhouse, a popular hiking destination in Cedar Mesa. It may date to 1230 AD or so, and is made of mud over woven sticks—known in medieval Europe as wattle-and-daub construction, but in the southwest as jacal. Those are the original painted stripes on the exterior, and an adjacent building has an elaborate pattern painted on its walls. The picture works fine (except for the absence of anything to indicate its scale) to illustrate a text on construction practices of the Anasazi. As a photograph, however, it doesn't do much. I recall that I was so involved in the subject at the time I forgot about a photographer's first task—to make a good image.

In this photo—taken at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico a few years ago—the setting is very different—a broad canyon floor with stone walls rising three and four stories high. I kept my enthusiasm in check (sort of) while looking for a perspective that might result in an interesting photograph, regardless of what it might reveal about architecture or construction. My purpose was not to document Chaco but to see what I could do photographically with the ruins and the shadows and the cliffs. That almost always means shooting early in the morning or in the late afternoon when the shadows are most dramatic.

Hovenweep National Monument consists of at least a dozen significant sites in Utah and Colorado, most located at the head of a canyon. Its towers have attracted photographers for decades, and I was not immune. After spending several hours one afternoon at the principal site, I decided I had to return at first light, when all but the major walls were in darkness. This is one of more than 50 exposures I made over a half-hour period—about fives times more than I shoot when working on a major church in, say, Newark or Paterson. But then I can return to Newark and Paterson rather more easily than to Utah. Note that there is very little information here—nothing to indicate the scale, the location of any entrances or windows, or much about the construction. Fairly worthless to anyone actually studying the ruin for what it might reveal about the Anasazi. But it is a good photograph, and for me that is the essential thing.

Incidentally, the term Anasazi is now considered politically incorrect. It is a Navajo term that might mean ancient enemies, and is rejected by descendents of those ancient peoples— the Hopi, the Lagunas, and members of a dozen pueblos mostly between Santa Fe and Taos. But the word is too widely used to go away so quickly, so I have used it here in preference to the more acceptable term of ancient puebloans.

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