Luis Gonzalez Palma is among the most recognizable Latin American photographers. The early work he is canonized for address the difficult past of his birth country of Guatemala and its people. This history of engagement spans topics from the colonial plight of the Mayan people to the legacy of the civil war and “the disappeared.” González Palma employs the intimacy of portraiture, weight of the gaze, and qualities of chosen materials to drive meaning in his work. But this is only the beginning.

Möbius is a diverse and open-ended series, which began in 2013. The artist embraces, destroys and rebuilds upon structures he built up for himself over 40 years, beginning with his own iconic work. Luis González Palma has been celebrated for symbolism, portraiture, and photography. To reduce him to these realms is to underestimate his profound dialectic. To break away from the confines of his own past, through Möbius González Palma seeks to reinvent and renew his vision and its perception by others.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW ALL THE WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION.

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While visiting Paris Photo this past November, we were thrilled to be able to meet with Coco and gather some new inventory for our gallery! We won’t be holding a formal reception for this exhibition so please visit us anytime during gallery hours 11-5pm Tuesday – Saturday to view the exhibition! Today, March 14, we are open 11-4pm!

French artist Coco Fronsac paints non-European masks onto Western vernacular photographs from the early 20^th Century. A dichotomy is developed between the early forms from the continents of Africa, Oceania, America, and Asia, and the standardized nature of photographic portraits as they occurred a century ago. These surreal images plunge us into a dreamlike, comical world, contrasting ritual and tradition, to  exploit the unexpected juxtapositions with startling effect.  For the artist, the portraits seek to bring a commonality to the human experience by representing the family relationship and different stages of development for a Western person like herself (moving from birth, to communion, military service, marriage, etc.) in context with non-Western rituals she respects.’

Coco Fronsac plays with the viewers’ vision of time, to better project themselves into a new, fluctuating, living, subjective reality. The vernacular photographs on which Fronsac works themselves go back in time.  The paintings she mixes over the photographs typically go back to indigenous cultures she admires.  With the combination, she imbues a contemporary approach to both subjects, bringing a new portrayal of humanity’s present position.

 

VIEW ALL OF COCO FRONSAC’S WORK HERE.

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Obscura Gallery presents IAN MARKUS: Fragments of the Frontier, a photographic exploration of the fading culture of ranching in Montana. With imagery created from a 4 x 5†film camera, Ian composites two or more negatives in the darkroom to create ethereal, large-format gelatin silver prints. The resulting ghostly images give a visceral interpretation of the fading cowboy culture that Ian has encountered in the contemporary ranches of Montana.

Santa Fean Ian Markus is the son of the late Obscura Gallery photographer Kurt Markus, who had a long storied career including photographing cowboy culture, and publishing three cowboy monographs since the 1980s. Ian has witnessed this subject matter since he was a young boy accompanying his father on photographic expeditions in the West and assisting Kurt for many long hours in the darkroom. This work provides an insightful perspective into the current state of ranching, showing the juxtaposition of a practice that is facing numerous challenges in our contemporary climate.

VIEW ALL THE WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION HERE.

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Obscura Gallery presents our 2024 Holiday exhibition of small, photo-based works by gallery and guest artists including

Angie Brockey, Tulsa, OK
Brigitte Carnochan,Palo Alto, CA
Sam Elkind, Santa Fe, NM
Nicola Hackl-Haslinger,Austria
Max Kellenberger,San Francisco, CA
Louviere+Vanessa, New Orleans, LA
Jennifer Schlesinger, Santa Fe, NM
Caitlyn Soldan, Santa Fe, NM
Eddie Soloway,Santa Fe, NM
and more!

We will host a Holiday open house reception on Saturday, November 30, 2024 from 1-5pm with many of the artists present.

VIEW ALL THE WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION HERE.

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Obscura Gallery presents Norman Mauskopf: Descendants, a photographic exhibition of rare and vintage, black and white gelatin silver prints that were made by the photographer for the publication by the same name, published by Twin Palms in 2010. The prints in the exhibition include both published and unpublished images made for the book, which focuses on the Hispanic peoples and cultures of Northern New Mexico. Many of the prints were included in the application for the very first W. Eugene Smith Fellowship, which Mauskopf was then awarded in 2002. The book is out of print and Norman will be signing and selling his remaining copies at 4pm on Friday September 13; followed by the reception with the artist from 5-7pm.

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Join us this Friday from 5-7pm during the annual nationally acclaimed Santa Fe Indian Market weekend, for the opening reception of Parallel Playground, a collaborative photo-based exhibition with Obscura Gallery Apache artist Douglas Miles and New York City guest artist Al Díaz. Artist Douglas Miles (San Carlos Apache-Akimel O’odham) creates artistic work rooted in Apache history and deeply engaged with the world of contemporary pop culture. Al Díaz is an American urban artist best known for being among the first generation of graffiti writers in New York City and for co-creating the graffiti campaign SAMO© with Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1978. Each of these artists combines words, photographs, and mixed media in their art work, and their unique styles intersect with their deep passion for social justice within their own communities.

Both artists will be in attendance at the reception on Friday, August 16 from 5-7pm

DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE.

VIEW ALL THE WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION HERE.

BOOK SIGNING
This Is My Life I’m Talking About
By Danny Lyon

June 8, 2024
1pm at Obscura Gallery

PURCHASE BOOK HERE.

This Is My Life I’m Talking About (Damiani Books, 2024) by Danny Lyon is a picaresque memoir by the legendary photographer and filmmaker, whose work has left an indelible mark on the world of photography. The book recounts Lyon’s life of adventures and tragedies, from his groundbreaking documentation of the Civil Rights Movement, to his role in pioneering the New Journalism Movement and his intimate portrayals of subcultures.

This Is My Life I’m Talking About shares stories about Lyon’s family roots in Russia and his youth in New York City, his beautiful lifelong friendship with the American civil rights hero John Lewis, and his immersion into the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club, upon which his famous photojournalist work The Bikeriders (1968) is based. Throughout, Lyon writes with tremendous feeling and humor, and the book features a selection of unpublished and unseen pictures from his extraordinary life.

“Cal, born in Canada as Arthur Dion, riding with Little Barbara. Cal, a former Hells Angel from San Bernadino, is my best friend in the Outlaws. In my Hyde Park apartment, he narrated many of the stories that became the text of the book. In the film Cal is played by Boyd Holbrook. A housepainter, Cal fell off a ladder and died in the 1980s.†© Photograph Danny Lyon.

“SNCC Chairman John Lewis speaking in Mississippi, 1963. At that time I shared an apartment in Atlanta with John and Sam Shirah.†© Photograph Danny Lyon.

In addition to new memoir Danny Lyon will also be signing books for his book, The Bikeriders (Aperture 2014), first published in 1968 and inspired the feature-length film by Jeff Nichols of the same name debuting this June. The Bikeriders explores firsthand the stories and personalities of the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club. This journal-size volume features original black-and-white photographs and transcribed interviews by Lyon, made from 1963 to 1967, when he was a member of the Outlaws gang. Authentic, personal, and uncompromising, Lyon’s depiction of individuals on the outskirts of society offers a gritty yet humane perspective that subverts more commercialized treatments of Americana. Akin to the documentary style of 1960s-era New Journalism made famous by writers such as Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, Lyon’s photography is saturation reporting at its finest. The Bikeriders is a touchstone publication of 1960s counterculture, crucially defining the vision of the outlaw biker as found in Easy Rider and countless other movies and photobooks.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE.

About the Author
Danny Lyon was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1942 and raised in Queens. As a student at the University of Chicago he joined the civil rights movement, becoming the first staff photographer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. He is a photojournalist, writer, and filmmaker. His non-fiction books include The Bikeriders, The Destruction of Lower Manhattan, Conversations with the Dead, Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, Like a Thief’s Dream and American Blood. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography and later in filmmaking. In 1990 he received a Rockefeller Fellowship in filmmaking and in 2011 the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism. In 2016 he had a major retrospective (Message to the Future) at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In 2023 his exhibition Danny Lyon: Journey West was at the Albuquerque Museum. A feature film of The Bikeriders, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Jeff Nichols and starring Austin Butler, Jody Comer, and Tom Hardy, is due for U.S, release in June 2024.

VIEW DANNY LYON’S PHOTOGRAPHS HERE.

 

 

 

 

 

Obscura Gallery, Michael Berman, WildEarth Guardians, and the New Mexico Museum of Art present a celebration event and a photographic exhibition on May 17 that will honor all that’s exceptional about our beloved Gila Wilderness on its 100th birthday. On May 17 at 3pm at the New Mexico History Museum, the celebration event will bring together unique voices and perspectives on the Gila Wilderness’ long history of inspiring advocacy through storytelling and art. Following the talk at the Museum, the photographic reception will be held at Obscura Gallery from 5 – 7pm at 225 Delgado Street, Santa Fe.

A hundred years ago, Aldo Leopold cooked up a fine idea in the Gila and we tagged these end-of-the-line places with the moniker “Wilderness†– so a celebration is in order. And an opportunity to come closer to that ideal.
-Michael P Berman

The 3 pm May 17 celebration talk at the New Mexico History Museum will feature celebrated photographer Michael P. Berman, as well as other contributors from the anthology First & Wildest: The Gila Wilderness at 100, published in 2022 by Torrey House Press. A Guggenheim Fellow, Berman uses his art as a catalyst to renew and heighten our perception of the land by bringing awareness to the complexity of the biological world through political and social dialogue of the West. His photographs appear throughout First & Wildest, and his 2012 monograph Gila: The Enduring Silence, published by Museum of New Mexico Press, reflects his explorations of its wildest corners.

The event will also include Elizabeth Hightower Allen, the anthology’s editor and a contributing editor at Outside magazine, and Albuquerque-based journalist Laura Paskus, senior producer of the NMPBS series, “Our Land: New Mexico’s Environmental Past Present, and Future” and author of the 2020 book “At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate,” and editor of the forthcoming anthology, “Water Bodies: Love Letters to the Most Abundant Substance on Earth,” from Torrey House Press.

Joining via video will be U.S. Representative Gabe Vasquez, from New Mexico’s Second Congressional District, who is leading the effort to designate the Gila River as Wild and Scenic in Congress. An avid hunter, angler, and friend of the Gila, Vasquez is founder of the Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project and co-founder of the pioneering New Mexico Outdoor Equity Fund.

With stories of place-based connection, we’ll celebrate the wonders of this country’s first wilderness, and we’ll think boldly about what’s needed to protect this special place for the next 100 years.

Following the talk at the Museum, the photographic reception will be held at Obscura Gallery from 5 – 7pm at 225 Delgado Street, Santa Fe.

A portion of the Obscura Gallery proceeds from the sales of Michael Berman’s exhibition artworks will be donated to WildEarth Guardians to continue their important work in the Gila Wilderness.

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VIEW ALL THE WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION HERE.