Interview with Simone Frances, Photographer for HSFF's Old Santa Fe Today

Simone Frances, Laboratory of Anthropology, Director’s Residence for the new and fifth edition of Old Santa Fe Today

For our blog, HSFF’s Development Coordinator Melanie McWhorter interviews Simone Frances about her work, living in New Mexico, and photographing architectural spaces including images from her thesis project and the contemporary illustrations for Old Santa Fe Today. The book is slated to be released by the Museum of New Mexico Press in fall 2021.

Melanie McWhorter: How did you end up at the College of Santa Fe program in the early 2000s?

Simone Frances: My father served in the army during the Vietnam War. He was a pilot and an aircraft mechanic. We started visiting the southwestern states when I was young, and, having grown up just south of Canada, I wanted to get away from trees and snow and mud. Now, of course, I miss trees, snow, and mud.

MM: That lead you to the antique photographic printer speciality? Where did you work on the older photographer processes and why that niche?

SF: I met Anna Strickland, the Rhode Island School of Design professor and artist, in 2009 while living in Belfast, Maine. Ms. Strickland taught antique and alternate photographic processes at RISD for many decades. Her career as a photographer was largely focused on climate and environmental changes as well as a deep conceptual intersection with Buddhism and the resilience within the things we consider temporary. I printed with Ms. Strickland for many years. She was a generous mentor and motivator, as she advocated for artists to pursue their work regardless of the absence of commercial or institutional support. I was given volumes of experience and knowledge in platinum, gum bichromate, and other early photographic techniques, but the lasting gift of working with Ms. Strickland was her commitment to the practice and to the work, which is rare and invaluable.

© Simone Frances from her series Isolate to a Controllable Space

© Simone Frances from her series Isolate to a Controllable Space

MM: Why did you choose the University of New Mexico program? What do you feel are the strength of this program or some of your most valuable take-aways from your studies and research there? 

SF: The photography program at UNM is nationally renowned and has been for many decades. I will always be honored to have received my MFA there. The program structure adheres to an older model of MFA programs that provides its graduate students with the opportunity to teach within their field for three years. Additionally, my time as a fellow at the Center for Southwest Research & Special Collections provided a setting to expand my knowledge of descriptive language in the archive and library sciences and especially as it relates to the social and cultural understanding and dissemination of images. The archive is a complicated place, its mediation of materials, access, and curation. Because I came into graduate school as an older person with many life experiences, opportunities like this were really valuable for me. As my so-called studio practice was already well developed, I wanted to spend time teaching and building my experience more widely.

MM: Your previous projects are personal, seemingly autobiographical in a performative way, but also focus on what you call ‘the public arena of institutional architecture’ including the work produced for your thesis show, ‘isolate to a controllable space.’ Tell us a bit about what the term ‘the public arena of institutional architecture’ how this approach to the study of space guides how you photograph the architecture and structures, and how you visually explore their use, history, and narrative.

SF: My inquiries into architecture, and its reach into the delineated and named, commodified or neglected landscapes of public and private space, have led me to many places. Immersing in government and museum architecture of Mexico City, spatially confined routines of monastic life in rural Greece, to the free public experience of street and sidewalk living in Berlin, my comparative studies of the uses of public place and behavior of people in these spaces look toward our relationality. I think that we have a participatory and performative relationship with public space, and its intersection and influence into the private speaks to the nature of being as a negotiation with levels of obedience, a navigation through and around systems and space.

My earlier works were performative, exploring the intersection of quotidian spaces with confrontational gestures. As the images lack narrator, story, events, time, and sequence I eschew those elements and its collective whole.

© Simone Frances from her series Isolate to a Controllable Space

© Simone Frances from her series Isolate to a Controllable Space

MM: You were commissioned to shoot the new photographs for Old Santa Fe Today for Historic Santa Fe Foundation after a recommendation from a contemporary at UNM. Some of your previous work including from your thesis show helped HSFF in the decision to contract with you for the project. How did your previous projects on the public use of institutional architecture inform the shoots for Old Santa Fe Today?

SF: Through my previous and ongoing works, I acknowledge that systems like architecture are conductors of the relational and participatory processes of identification and categorization. We know that our ability to live and to move, and in what condition, is critically dependent on a corporeal placement in both private and public space. This placement is determined, and predetermined, by the prevailing order of things. This placement is also determined by a set of procedures working together as part of an interconnected network that includes, excludes, and ignores in ways that are relevant and beneficial to our dominant structures. I believe that these mechanisms are at work in all times in architecture; in primary and secondary homes, institutional buildings like schools and government buildings, prisons, parks, and businesses. I think that it is important not to mythologize architectural structures, to speak about why they came and what they were built for and what they still do. I think all architecture is active and implementing different types of social ordering. I am glad that HSFF was interested in having this type of working methodology inform the approach for photographing Old Santa Fe Today.

Simone Frances, Donaciano Vigil House for the new and fifth edition of Old Santa Fe Today

Simone Frances, Dodge Bailey House for the new and fifth edition of Old Santa Fe Today

Simone Frances, Donaciano Vigil House for the new and fifth edition of Old Santa Fe Today

MM: When shooting for Old Santa Fe Today, what are some of the interesting locations and features that you discovered? Any similarities amongst Santa Fe’s architecture? Any stories of note?

SF: All the images for Old Santa Fe Today were shot from February 2020 through October 2020. Of course this was/is a historically challenging period for everyone, not just in Santa Fe but state and worldwide. My primary goal was to accommodate the health and safety of everyone involved. The individuals who managed or owned these properties were incredibly generous to have me at locations and offer their time and enthusiasm to HSFF's goals.

MM: What are some of your current personal projects? Where do you see your career path leading in the future? 

SF: I am currently working on a duology of photographic print books entitled No Is A Place: The Metropolitan Museum of Art & Other Problems and This is Personal for you: Long standing observations & other horizons.

About the artist/interviewee
Simone Frances is a writer and architectural photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and in coastal Maine. Frances received her BFA in photography in 2004 from the College of Santa Fe. After a long career as an antique photographic printer, Frances took her master’s in photography from the University of New Mexico in 2019, where she was a teacher of photography. Exhibiting locally and nationally, she has received awards and honors, such as the SITE Santa Fe Site Scholar, SOMA Mexico City Fellowship, the Fred M. Calkins Award, the Phyllis Muth Scholarship for Fine Arts, and the John L. Knight Award. Frances served as the Pictorial Fellow at the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections from 2017 to 2019. Frances’ research led her to the fields of visual culture and public environment. Her conceptual work is centered around the public arena of institutional architecture, physical and conceptual structures of whiteness, and the participatory and performative relationships of public space. She is the photographer for the new and fifth edition of Historic Santa Fe Foundation’s Old Santa Fe Today.

Simone Frances, Spitz Gardesky House for the new and fifth edition of Old Santa Fe Today

Simone Frances, Sheldon Parsons House and Studio for the new and fifth edition of Old Santa Fe Today

Simone Frances, Edwin Brooks House for the new and fifth edition of Old Santa Fe Today

Nuevo Mexico Profundo Heritage Archive - Interviews with New Mexicans

In the past months, we have been posting a selection of interviews primarily conducted by Nuevo Mexico Profundo’s Frank Graziano including one with William deBuys, Weto and Barbara Malisow, and former HSFF Board Chair Mac Watson. We received an announcement that the archive of interviews, called Profundo Heritage Archive with about 50+ as of the time of this post, will be housed at University of New Mexico’s Center for Southwest Research. The interviews with New Mexicans of various backgrounds and professions will be available online for all to access. Find information about the interviews here and as we gain more information about how to access the audio, we will keep you posted. The interviewees are listed below.

Click on the above image to download the PDF with the complete list of interviewees and more information on Nuevo Mexico Profundo and the sponsors for the archive.

El Zaguán Video Series: Acequia de la Muralla - A Tour by Mayordomo B.C. Rimbeaux

Watch the video on YouTube here

The current health crisis forced us all to re-look at the way we do things in the everyday. Our celebrated Salon talks, here at El Zaguán, are an in-person casualty of the times. However,

Kyle Maier of Kamio Media and his Instagram focusing on the history of Canyon Road has volunteered his time and talents to capture some of what we had planned for 2020 in video. He and we have presented the Annual Garden Party & Members Meeting online, as well as a wonderful discussion by Tom Leech and Pat Musick about their collaboration on the Shakespeare project of calligraphy and marbled paper, an exhibition which was a sell-out of the works online through our website.

We had scheduled a Salon talk by B. C. Rimbeaux, mayordomo of the Acequia de la Muralla, one of the few remaining functional acequias in the city, and the second oldest of all acequias in Santa Fe, only to fall to health restrictions. Instead, we present here B. C. on site of the acequia this late summer, working the ditch and giving us an overall history of the importance of water to New Mexico culture and subsistence, as well as details of the past on the Acequia de la Muralla. Kyle has photographed the ditch and the process beautifully. We hope you enjoy this outdoors Salon presentation.

To join HSFF as a member or donation to our general fund or specific programs including the new edition of Old Santa Fe Today, the Mac Watson Fellowship, and the Faith and John Gaw Meem Preservation Trades Internship, visit the Join & Give page.

Watch the video on YouTube here

The Roque Lobato House - A Book on HSFF's Register Property Lobato - Morley House

PURCHASE BOOK AT BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE

The Roque Lobato House
Santa Fe, New Mexico
by Chris Wilson and Oliver Horn
Photography by Robert Reck
Schenck Southwest Publishing
2014

Description from book jacket:
The eighteenth-century world that Roque Lobato, soldier and eventual armorer to the Royal Spanish Garrison of Santa Fe, entered was a dark, turbulent, and unforgiving place. Born into a poor family most likely in the 1730s, Lobato grew up during a time when the nature of the Spanish colony was changing. Brash and perulant, Lobato avoided almost certain indentured servitude by opting for the dangerous course of winning honor and wealth as a soldier. As a reward for his many years of participation in the Comanche Indian Wars, Governor Juan Bautista de Anza granted the land for the construction of the Roque Lobato House.

Built in 1785, the Roque Lobato House has not only witnessed transformative historical events but also actively participated in some. In the nineteenth century, the house was intimately involved with Don Gaspar Ortiz y Alarid and the activities of the notorious Santa Fe Ring, known for defrauding New Mexicans of their land titles.

In the twentieth century, the by then renovated house served as a prototype for archacologist and occasional spy Sylvanus G. Morley's Spanish Pueblo revival architectural style, ultimately adopted as the Santa Fe style that unified the city architecture and attracted tourists to the city. Most recently, the Roque Lobato House underwent an extensive renovation that removed many of the changes made in the previous few decades.

Chris Wilson and Oliver Horn trace the long history of the Roque Lobato House and its fascinating owners. This house was not only pivotal in the development of Santa Fe style but also one of Santa Fe’s most historic houses.

About the Authors:
CHRIS WILSON, former J. B. Jackson Professor of Cultural Landscape Studies of the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning in Albuquerque, and founding director of the its Historic Preservation and Regionalism Program, has written widely on architecture, tourism, and the politics of culture in the Southwest. His coauthored book La Tierna Amarilla: Its History, Architecture, and Cultunal Landscape (1991) won the Downing Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. His book The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Tnadition (1997) received the Villagra Award from the Historical Society of New Mexico and the Cummings Award from the Vernacular Architecture Forum. Facing Southwest: The Life & Houses of John Gaw Meem (200) sings the virtues of both one of Santa Fe's leading citizens and the regional design tradition he helped to sustain. Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies After J, B. Jackson (2003), also coauthored, provides the most up-to-date survey of cultural landscapes. Wilson was lead author and editor of the award-winning study The Plazas of New Mexico (2011). A Field Guide to Cool Neighborhoods, focuses of pedestrian neighborhoods in North America before and after the automobile.

OLIVER HORN is urrently a PhD candidate in US Diplomatic History at Georgetown University. He also holds an MA degree from Georgetown University in Global International and Comparative History. He
graduated magna cum laude with a BA degree from Washington and Lee University, double majoring in US History and Politics. He has written numerous articles for Heritage Foundation. This is his first book.

Read about the Lobato - Morley on HSFF’s Register of Properties Worthy of Preservation nomination written by Dr. Audra Bellmore.

The Roque Lobato House, Santa Fe, NM

$39.95

The Roque Lobato House
Santa Fe, New Mexico
by Chris Wilson and Oliver Horn
Photography by Robert Reck
Schenck Southwest Publishing
2014

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Nuevo Mexico Profundo Interview Series: Mac Watson

This subject is near and dear to many of us, especially at the Historic Santa Fe Foundation. Mac Watson is a consummate professional in the field of preservation, and our former Chair of the Foundation Board. He is a native of Santa Fe and the interview covers growing up here, his life and work, and thoughts on the future of preservation. This is well worth a listen from a well respected member of this community.

Mac has added this written note to his audio discussion:

After listening to the recording of my conversation with Frank Graziano I became concerned that, in response to Frank’s questions about my experiences growing up in Santa Fe and about my relations with Hispanic children in particular, I may have presented a completely negative story. I spoke about a few experiences when I was subject to aggression at the hands of small gangs of Hispanic kids, mainly because those moments are at the surface of my memory and recalled without effort.  What I failed to mention are the many Hispanic friends I had throughout my time in public school here in Santa Fe, from the 4th grade and until I left after the 10th grade to attend school on Colorado.

As one might expect, most but not all of these friendships were with boys. When I started the 4th grade I knew not a soul in the school so Rudy Rios, whose desk was next to mine soon became my “best friend.” We have remained friends over all the years that have passed and I became close to many in his family--his parents, his younger brother  León, his sisters Cecilia and Rita, and Rudy’s nephew Juan. Before the Covid struck, one of my favorite pastimes was to join the Rios family in the family home on Camino del Monte Sol for their regular family lunch.

Several of my friendships were made with kids who were in the both in the junior high and high school bands with me. These include the brothers Donald and Horacio Manzanares and Stanley Griego Evans. Stan, when I meet him now, never fails to make sure that I’m told that he was a better musician than I was.

I knew the basketball stars Jerry and Leonard Roybal in junior high. Because we were in the same grade, Leonard and I were closer. I remain happy to congratulate Lenny whenever he coaches the Espanola Sun Devils to another state championship. These friendships and many others were possible for me because Santa Fe’s neighborhoods were considerably more ethnically “mixed” than they are now. 

About Nuevo Mexico Profundo
Nuevo Mexico Profundo is the venture that conducts tours of New Mexico churches on the High Road, in the mountain villages, at pueblos, to raise money for the repair and restoration of these churches so important to the communities where they reside. Profundo is a collaboration started by Frank Graziano and supported by the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, Spanish Colonial Arts Society, Cornerstones Community Partnerships, New Mexico Historic Preservation Division, the Office of the New Mexico State Historian, and the New Mexico Heritage Preservation Alliance. Given the conditions of the ongoing health crisis, tours and events planned by Profundo have been canceled for the year. This program of interviews and recording histories was put into action according to social distancing and health regulations. You can learn more about Nuevo Mexico Profundo at nuevo-mexico-profundo.com.

Three Properties Added to HSFF's Register of Properties Worthy of Preservation

Historic Santa Fe Foundation recognizes the Dorothy McKibbin House, Roque - Lobato House, and El Delirio/SAR campus

Photograph of El Delirio/SAR above by Simone Frances for the new edition of Old Santa Fe Today

At the August 27, 2020 Board of Directors meeting, the  Historic Santa Fe Foundation's Board of Directors voted to add three properties -- The Dorothy McKibbin House, Lobato - Morley House, and El Delirio/School for Advanced Research (SAR) to the HSFF Register of Properties Worthy of Preservation. The properties were approved unanimously by the Board and the Register now holds a total of 96 to be included in the new edition of HSFF's upcoming book Old Santa Fe Today authored by Dr. Audra Bellmore with photography by Simone Frances, and published by Museum of New Mexico Press. The book will the culmination of all the efforts of those who nominated, researched, and listed properties and resources on HSFF’s Register of Properties Worthy of Preservation, one of the first initiatives of the foundation since the incorporation in 1962. There are many properties in Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico that deserve this attention and recognition. Our efforts in listing these historic structures and resources brings attention and awareness to the need for their continued preservation and maintenance.

Please find brief information below about the three new nominated, reserched, and approved properties. Contact Pete Warzel at pete.warzel@historicsantafe.org or 505-983-2567 for more information or visit HSFF's 545 blog piece on the three new properties or HSFF's Register page.

Terraced landscaping at El Delirio, as viewed from the White sisters’ home. Photo by T. Harmon Parkhurst, 1928, SAR Archive, AC 18 418 30a, Courtesy of the School for Advanced Research

El Delirio/SAR
Nomination written by Dr. Nancy Owen Lewis and Jean Schamberg

You may know this property as the campus of the School for Advanced Research (SAR). “El Delirio” is the original name given the estate by the White sisters, Amelia Elizabeth and Martha, who purchased the land, including a small adobe house, in 1923.

Dr. Nancy Owen Lewis, PhD, and Jean Schaumberg, each with intimate knowledge of SAR and the estate, researched and wrote the nomination for the property. Lewis has previously published the book A Peculiar Alchemy: A Centennial History of the School for American Research, 1907-2007.

The property and its architecture, the history of its use through today, as well as the significance of the people associated with El Delirio over almost a century, certainly signify the former estate worthy of preservation, recognition, and addition to the HSFF Register. It is an honor to make that addition.

View the Register listing for El Delirio/SAR

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Photograph of Lobato - Morley House above by Simone Frances for the new edition of Old Santa Fe Today

The Lobato – Morley House
Nomination written by Dr. Audra Bellmore
The Roque  Lobato House was one of the first properties added to the newly instituted HSFF Register of Properties Worthy of Preservation in 1964. In 1978, it was unceremoniously removed when the then owner did renovation and reconstruction after asking HSFF to review his plans, but completed the work before any evaluation was undertaken. The property remained on the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties and lingered contentiously in the background of HSFF history.

Chris Wilson, Regents Professor of Landscape Architecture, Emeritus, at University of New Mexico (UNM), co-authored the book on the property with Oliver Horn titled The Roque Lobato House: Santa Fe, New Mexico (2014). In that publication, Wilson opined that “…the Roque Lobato House is unique even among its peers in its historic breadth and density.” So, in mid-2020, Dr. Audra Bellmore, PhD, Associate Professor and Curator of the Center for Southwest Research, Special Collections, at UNM, researched and wrote the nomination for the more properly named Lobato – Morley House.

HSFF welcomes back this Santa Fe treasure to the Register of Properties Worthy of Preservation, where it belongs.

View the Register listing for Lobato - Morley House here

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The Dorothy McKibbin House
Nomination written by Katie Dix

This home is an architectural gem and a fairly unknown center of significant Santa Fe and U.S. history. Dorothy McKibbin was the renowned ‘gatekeeper’ at 109 E. Palace Avenue in Santa Fe for entry and exit to the WWII-era Manhattan Project up the hill at Los Alamos Laboratories. This was her home, built in 1936, and the center of social life for scientists and employees at the Lab when in Santa Fe.

The nomination was researched and written by Katie Dix, a UNM graduate student in the School of Architecture and Planning, and our first official Mac Watson Fellow. This fellowship program was specifically designed to engage grad students from UNM to participate with HSFF in research of significant properties as additions to our Register. Dix’s work and written nomination made an elegant argument that the Dorothy McKibbin House be added as “an outstanding example of New Mexican architecture and Santa Fe styles, showcasing the work of Kathy Stinson Otero as an architect.”

For more information or questions, contact Pete Warzel at pete.warzel@historicsantafe.org or 505-983-2567 or visit HSFF's 545 blog piece on the three new properties or HSFF's Register page.