NM Arts Showcase
Artist Showcase: New Mexico’s Diverse Artistic Community
New Mexico is one of the most culturally diverse of states and is home to thousands of artists, artisans, actors, performers, musicians, dancers, writers, film makers, and others. Santa Fe boasts the highest number of artists per capita in any U.S. city, and is the first designated UNESCO Creative City in the nation. We are honored to showcase, on a rotating basis, the rich bounty of creative individuals that contribute to New Mexico’s creative sector.
Current Showcase: CENTER Offers an Expanding Photography Destination in Santa Fe
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- CENTER display: A Cucapá youth fishes for crabs near the mouth of the Colorado River in Mexican state of Baja California Norté, waiting for his father to return in his boat from curvina fishing. Because the Colorado River itself no longer reaches the ocean because of diversions upstream in the United States, the water at the river channel’s mouth is a brackish mix of sea water and irrigation runoff.
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- CENTER display: Family photographs hang on the wall in Andrea Carrillo’s mother’s home on Sierra Blanca Rd in Tularosa, NM. Andrea and many of her friends and family grew up on Sierra Blanca and now have cancer that they attribute to the radiation exposure caused by the Trinity atomic bomb test. Andrea’s sister died of cancer a few years ago.
Each year for more than two decades, Santa Fe–based international photography organization CENTER has created opportunities for photographers through its flagship event, the Review Santa Fe Photo Symposium. Held in the Railyard and downtown during November, Review Santa Fe attracts industry leaders seeking new talent, including editors from major publications and curators from renowned institutions, along with acclaimed and emerging lens-based artists.
Review Santa Fe also includes a vibrant and far-ranging public photo exhibition held inside the Farmers Market Pavilion and a series of free artist talks. The reviewers in attendance hail from such leading institutions as The Atlantic, The New York Times, Harvard Art Museums, and dozens of other institutions.
Two of CENTER’s 2024 award recipients are New Mexico artists. Sara Abbaspour’s project Transitional Realms observes and creates a vision of contemporary Iran. New Mexico photographer Sofie Hecht’s project Downwinders documents families living within the 50-mile radius of the Trinity test site, including fourth-generation cancer survivors.
This year’s event will be followed by a watershed event for the organization with the unveiling, in December, of its first public space for photographic exhibitions and educational programming. A destination for photographers, curators and collectors of lens-based art, this new resource will be open to the public and offer a spacious gallery, lectures and classes, and a library. This new physical presence marks an exciting chapter for the 30-year-old organization, deepening CENTER’s commitment to its home community of Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico.
Activating the Archive
In 2024 CENTER embarked on another major project as the organization became one of a few select institutions chosen to receive a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities’ highly competitive Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program. With the NEH’s assistance, CENTER’s Activating the Archive: Preserving 21st-Century Photography will make nearly 20,000 images and related text accessible online, creating a robust and wide-ranging resource for scholars, educators, and the public.
The collection, comprised of two decades worth of in-depth, socially and environmentally focused lens-based projects, includes projects by renowned photographers who have received support through CENTER’s many annual grants and awards. When complete, the Activating the Archive online library will showcase images by award-winning photographers alongside captions, artists’ statements, scholarly analysis, and details about the technological, social, and cultural milestones reflected in the artists’ work.
“As CENTER celebrates its 30th anniversary, we are excited to receive the NEH’s support as we begin planning to make our vast image collection searchable and accessible to the public,” said CENTER’s executive director Laura Wzorek Pressley, who will lead Activating the Archive. “Photo projects produced with CENTER’s support have responded to timely issues such as immigration and displacement, identity, citizenship, the human impact of environmental problems, and the aftermath of violence and conflict.”
CENTER will collaborate with Fred Gibbs, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, who will advise on the architecture and development of the archive. Professor Gibbs was Director of Digital Scholarship at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History of New Media from 2009–2013, where he directed and collaborated on dozens of pioneering digital history projects.
Activating the Archive will be guided by a Scholar Advisor Counsel that includes Professor Gibbs, curator Mary Anne Redding of Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC; Digital archivist Rachel Snow, Ph.D., who has previously worked on media collections for New Mexico Public Media; and Will Wilson, a Diné photographer and Associate Professor at the University of Texas, Austin, formerly the Head of the Photography Department at the Santa Fe Community College in New Mexico.