Church, Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico

Paul Strand traveled to New Mexico in the early 1930s since his wife Rebecca was spending time with the painter Georgia O’Keeffe at her studio near Santa Fe. He was attracted to the architecture of the indigenous Indian culture, as well as the decaying storefronts in old mining towns. Strand was particularly drawn to the 18th-century church of San Francisco de Assisi, depicted here. Its unornamented adobe building material appears to be rooted naturally to its site. The small image size is the result of contact printing from a 5x6 inch negative, but the image nevertheless communicates a powerful sense of volume and mass. The corners of the church are carefully placed near the image’s edges so that the structure seems to push out of the frame. The earthy tonality of the print heightens attention to the organic texture of the adobe. The adjacent image is a rare detail of the church’s large buttress. Strand’s close cropping of this stark form against a dark cloud-filled sky verges on complete abstraction.