Finite Foto's Issue Thirteen: Cultural Landscape

The next issue of Finite Foto will be out next week. Make sure to check out the Cultural Landscape issue before the Environmental Issue is live. All the back issues, can be read on the archive page. Sign up for our mailing list on the home page.

Finite Foto - Issue Thirteen - Cultural Landscape In this issue, we feature works by Eric Cousineau and Alex Leme who photograph the disappearance of icons of the American culture: motels and "the" small town. Antone Dolezal speaks with Mary Anne Redding, Curator of Photography at The New Mexico History Museum, about her passion for the over 150 years of photographic records at this institution. Jennifer Schlesinger interviews Steve Fitch, one of the most established and, through his images and position as an educator, most influential photographers currently working in the state of New Mexico. David Ondrik spices up the photo issue by mixing in a touch of music in his review photographic aspects of The Decemberist newest album. For the theme of Cultural Landscape, we started out thinking of the term as "works of art, narratives of cultures, and expressions of regional identity." (The Cultural Landscape Foundation), but the evolution of the issue shows an embracing the nostalgia associated with the way humans change where we live or travel and how the photographic record helps us to embrace "the good old days". Gone are the days of what Dolezal calls in Cousineau's introduction of traveling "The Great American Highway", the mystique and innocence associated with the mid-21st century: Sitting poolside at the motel with a Scotch on the rocks reading your Jack Kerouac on the cross-country vacation in your 1958 Cadillac. The Polaroid is gone, replaced by The Impossible Project. Mill villages are dying, slowly replaced by suburbia. Independent motels are closing, replaced by chain hotels. These portfolios presented here capture regional identity, but it is a universally American identity. The photograph has helped to define these past generations and places for posterity. Please send us your thoughts at finitefoto@gmail.com.

© Steve Fitch Forty Years of Photography An Interview with Steve Fitch By Jennifer Schlesinger.

© Autumn de Wilde The King is Dead David Ondrik’s review of the photographic content of The Decemberists’ new recording, The King is Dead.

© Eric Cousineau American Motel Photographs by Eric Cousineau with Foreword by Antone Dolezal

Timothy H. O’Sullivan New Mexico: A Visual History A Conversation with Mary Anne Redding and Antone Dolezal.

© Alex Leme Small Town Photographs by Alex Leme and Introduction by Melanie McWhorter

Finite Foto is a new media collective that investigates and promotes the intersection of photography and culture in the state of New Mexico. We are dedicated to bringing awareness to the global art community about both historical and contemporary photography from all regions of the state.