Alex Harris photographed northern New Mexico from inside the cars. Not beside them and not about them: from the driver’s seat, through the windscreen, with the dashboard in the frame. Black Mesa, Looking East from Fred Cata’s 1957 Chevrolet Belair, July 1987 is a landscape photograph that is also a portrait of a man, because the interior of somebody’s car tells you more about them than their face will.
The exhibition
Northern New Mexico Color expanded on Alex Harris’s images documenting and celebrating New Mexico life and traditions, including his renowned lowrider series. The type-C print of Black Mesa, Looking East from Fred Cata’s 1957 Chevrolet Belair, July 1987 was among the works shown.
Opening reception with the artist, Friday, May 24th, 5:00 to 7:00 PM.
In the collection’s words
The lowrider pictures are the ones people talk about, and they should be, but the quieter Harris photographs are the reason we keep showing him. The kitchens, the bedrooms, the parking lot on a Saturday night. He is documenting a village culture at exactly the moment it was being asked to explain itself to outsiders, and he refused to make it picturesque. Colour, in his hands, is not decoration. It is evidence.
Continue exploring
- Alex Harris and his photographs in the collection, including Black Mesa and Las Trampas Church
- The Space Between and Uncovered, the shows either side of this one
- Photographs in the collection
- Elliott McDowell and Laura Gilpin
- All exhibitions at Webster Collection
