Adobe Church Project: Made of Earth and Faith

My Adobe Church Project is a visual narrative of cultural preservation in the great tradition of documentary/fine art photography exemplified in the work of Edward Weston, Edward Curtis, and William Christenberry. Their work captures the fragility of the world they observed. These artists focused on specific places, rendering them iconic. Like them, place is a primary theme in my work. My passion for place developed from my background in the social sciences. In New Mexico, nowhere is more telling of place than its adobe churches – especially those still overlaid with traditional mud and straw or lime plaster. These traditional churches are the focus of my project. They function as the metaphoric spine binding the people of New Mexico to their religion, rituals, traditions, and culture. While the social scientist in me appreciates the cultural alienation that attends modernization, the resulting neglect of these churches signals a growing disconnect between parishioners, their churches and their traditions. My objective is to document endangered and traditional adobe churches in New Mexico before they literally melt away, yielding to both natural, political, economic, cultural, and social forces. Tragically, too many traditional churches have been replaced, fallen into disrepair, or been plastered over with modern building materials.