"Saints and Sinners," Espanola, NM

​Saints and Sinners: If Taos is the "Soul of the Southwest," Espanola is its viscera.  With its people steeped in the traditional culture of Northern New Mexico, with the accompanying blood, sweat, toil and tears of its agricultural and blue-collar roots, the heart of Espanola beats to a different drum.  When driving north through Espanola, one notices on the right an iconic structure: Saints and Sinners, a bar and liquor store known far and wide for its neon sign that features an angel and a devil in close apposition.  This sign is also emblematic of a feature of nearly every little town and village in “El Norte”: a church, and a bar.  Inspired by this thought, I have traveled the highways and byways of northern New Mexico, searching out these structures, photographing them using black and white film. In some villages, either the church or the bar – sometimes both - no longer exist as functional entities, yet they remain as placeholders of a life that was, but no longer is: social centers of a society that has moved on and left behind its skeletal remains, haunting the landscape.  One imagines the dances and parties, celebrations and fistfights, that took place within the walls of the cantinas, and the weddings, baptisms, and funerals that were celebrated in the churches.  This series, which is ongoing, records, and sometimes abstracts, the past and present of this culturally distinct region and its people, capturing the gritty reality of life in these towns.