WHERE: New Mexico Museum of Art.
WHEN: Opens Friday, April 19 and runs through September 8, 2013.
TITLE: Shiprock and Mont St. Michel: Photographs by William Clift
ABOUT: This one-man exhibition by master photographer William Clift, a long-time Santa Fe resident, who for almost four decades, has photographed two monolithic sites that dominate their expansive landscapes: Shiprock, an eroded volcanic form that rises above the northwestern New Mexico desert and is sacred to the Navajo (Diné), and Mont St. Michel, a tidal island off the north coast of France that is famous for its Romanesque-Gothic church and monastery.
Going on view are more than 70 photographs. “These are pictures of tremendous sensitivity and resonance,” said Katherine Ware, Curator of Photography at the museum. “The artist’s devoted pursuit of these two subjects from 1973 to the present demonstrates the kind of seeing that is possible with sustained concentration. It’s very different from how most photographers work today.”
Born in Boston in 1944, artist Clift (www.williamclift.com) began making photographs at the age of ten with an early interest in Polaroid image making. As a teenager, he took a photography workshop with Paul Caponigro and was soon affiliated with many of the established practitioners of the medium. He moved to New Mexico in 1971, where he and his wife raised a family, and has earned a reputation as a thoughtful photographer and a meticulous printer. He is represented in the museum’s collection by twenty-four prints from across his career.
MORE DETAILS: Call 505.476.5072 or www.nmartmuseum.org.