From the Ground Up: Albuquerque's Renovations

"Conventions"


"Tetris"


"Moto/Motel"


"Cleaners (Part I)"


"Cleaners (Part I)"


"One Fool"


"Two Fools"


"Crossing"

From the Ground Up: Albuquerque’s Renovations

I set out to photograph Albuquerque’s crowds, and ended up joining them instead. I was a flâneuse, but behind the camera, I was a voyeuse. I wanted to get a sense of Albuquerque’s people, and I originally thought that the best way to do this would be to photograph crowds. Instead, I ended up taking a picture of our environment, yet I felt that I was still able to capture the people. I found that the settings that I chose to photograph represent Albuquerque and its inhabitants.

I decided on the theme of renovations as I photographed. When I went downtown, I decided to explore the plaza and the convention center, as I had not had the chance to walk around it since they renovated. On this sunny albeit cold winter day, the colored banners, relatively new to the plaza, gave the whole square a sense of energy. I drove up to Nob Hill still without the intention of photographing Albuquerque’s renovations, but as I parked, I remembered a recent Nob Hill adventure. My friend and I had followed a back alley parallel to Central Avenue, and come across a ruined building that we climbed onto the roof of, opening up to a full view of Central. We sat there and observed undetected (well, we did drop a french fry on a passerby). What was funny about this abandoned building was that it was the back of a pop-arty dry cleaners, so central to Nob Hill’s vibrant aesthetic. So I decided to take a photograph of this building and its front, as well as its adjacent deteriorated buildings, and make a series on Albuquerque’s renovations. The Convention Center and the plaza fit in as an obvious choice for this series, as they had been one of Albuquerque’s most recent large-scale facelifts. I also chose two photographs of Nob Hill that I thought represented the mix of its historic and contemporary character. “Moto/Motel” captures one of Albuquerque’s classic motels, and it looks like it could be a picture from a handful of decades ago, save for the modern cars. My final photograph, “Crossing,” captures Albuquerque’s urban sprawl, as it seems that Central leads right up to the Sandias. This photograph is a much less literal interpretation of renovation than the other ones in the series, but I wanted the final picture to give viewers a chance to reflect on what this could mean in terms of renovation. How would this street have looked one hundred years ago? What will in look like a hundred years from now? How have we changed the land? How has the land changed us?

Photographing can be a lonely business. Although I was photographing my home and my city, for the sake of being a reporter I took on an act of an aloof foreigner, unfamiliar to Albuquerque’s ways. Yet walking up and down Nob Hill, I melted into Albuquerque’s groups of people. I crossed the street with a family of four, greeted a couple standing outside a tattoo parlor, and thanked a stranger after she complimented my bag. I was honked at and stared at—and whether these actions were hostile or amiable remained ambiguous (very Albuquerque-esque indeed).

Any place that has had inhabitants for 10,000 years[1] is bound to need renovations. Santa Fe and Albuquerque both share deeply rooted Hispanic history, but Albuquerque is different in that the city itself is more eclectic (an argument for Santa Fe’s people can be made). Where Santa Fe has restored, Albuquerque has renovated. The city sprawls across the desert and crawls to every boundary, from mountain to valley to mountain. Although it is incredibly historic, it is distinctive in that it is also New Mexico’s urban hub and most forward-looking city. Consider its geography: downtown, only three minutes from Old Town, is Albuquerque’s hub of modernity, and one of the only places where you could confirm that Albuquerque actually has a night-life. Old Town, with the historic San Felipe de Neri Church and grand selection of museums, is its beating heart. This is how I found that Albuquerque’s architecture, constructions and renovations reflected its people. Old Town’s brown stucco; the inhabitants whose Hispanic families who have always been in New Mexico. Downtown; professionals whose careers rooted them here. Civilization on the brink of the Sandias; artists of all kinds whose hearts were drawn to the breathtaking landscape. Freeway entrances; those who wound up here because they lost their way. There are places for each of these groups of people in Albuquerque, yet they are for all of us. Albuquerque doesn’t ask that we only take on one of these identities—it wants us to take on all of them. This is evident in the city’s multifarious culture; it repels homogeneity, and people and places of different times and places stack up against each other, sharing spaces. The people here and the history here can cooperate, collaborate and coexist without encroaching on each other. We can appreciate, accept and adapt. And in the same way we are always building on tradition, we renovate.

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[1] "Albuquerque". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016.