Forward by William deBuys

These children burn the lens with their gaze. No matter the generation from which they come, for as long as photography has existed in New Mexico they have interrogated the adult world, asking, even pleading, “Will there be a place for me when I grow up?” “Is there a place for me now, as a child?”

Of the fifty states, New Mexico ranks dead last in child well-being. It wasn’t always so. From time out of mind New Mexico has been poor, and its immense and beautiful spaces make the delivery of social services a challenge. But in times past, before the rise of drug culture and consumerism, back when people lived closer to the land and extended families weren’t fractured by migration to the cities, maybe in those good old days New Mexico’s poverty was more salubrious, less destructive. And childhood was happier. Or maybe such notions are a myth. Perhaps through photography we can seek an answer: Look into the eyes of these kids and ask them to tell you how it was, how it is.

Searchlight New Mexico is an investigative journalism non-profit that has been probing children’s issues in New Mexico for the past two years, and we aren’t finished yet. Don Usner, a key member of Searchlight’s team, has documented those issues photographically. He conceived and curated this exhibit, in which the earliest image dates back to 1880 and the most recent is by Don himself from 2018. The purpose of this collection, however, is not to offer a strictly chronological view of childhood in New Mexico, let alone an exhaustive survey of the treatment of children in the state’s history of photography. ​

The images in this exhibit have been selected for their impact and for what they reveal about the world of childhood. They have also been selected for the way they speak to each other across eras, child to child, from the Great Depression to the 1970s and from the turn of the twentieth century to the day before yesterday.

Searchlight’s coverage of child well-being in New Mexico is archived on its website, searchlightnm.com, and a selection of its articles is available in Raising New Mexico, a magazine specially prepared for the 2019 legislative session and the commencement of a new gubernatorial administration. The issues that contribute to New Mexico’s dismal ranking as the worst state in the union in which to be a child will not soon go away, but they can be improved.

No one who looks into these children’s eyes can forget that they must be.​

William deBuys
Chair, Searchlight New Mexico

Amanda and Cameron Powell, Hobbs, New Mexico
George holds Baby Cedar after work at New Buffalo Commune, Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, Summer
Resettled farm child from Taos Junction to Bosque Farms project, New Mexico, published. Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration, Reproduction Number LCUSF34- 001638-E
Peñasco, New Mexico, a grade school student eating a hot lunch. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration, Reproduction Number LCUSW3- 014706-E
Laguna Indian Pueblo, located 50 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, children running in street. Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), NM Magazine Collection, Negative Number NMDC HP 2007.20.36
Two girls playing by a stream, New Mexico. Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, Negative Number 100272
Unidentified boy on horse, Los Alamos Ranch School, Los Alamos, New Mexico. Students at Los Alamos Ranch School were members of Los Alamos Troop 22, the first mounted Boy Scout troop in the United States. Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives Negative Number 001191
Boy with Sheep Picuris
Gerald Viarrial and Gilbert Viarrial, Chimayó, New Mexico
Juan and Patricia de Herrera playing baseball, Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico. Tito Apodaca Collection, New Mexico Centennial Project Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives Negative Number 142367
Two Mexican boys at Agua Fria near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives Negative Number 142367
Trampas, New Mexico. In many Spanish American homes, mattresses are rolled out on the floor at night. But by putting three under a blanket the López family all sleep in beds. Library of Congress U.S. Farm Security Administration, LC-SW3-015260-C
Three Children. Belen Harvey House photo archives Identifier 4100-09-2017
Heaven Chacon in her lowrider VW Beetle
A Taos girl, three-quarter length portrait, seated, facing front. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-106253
Taos County, New Mexico. Schoolboy at desk. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Division of Economic Information, NAIL Control Number: NWDNS-83-G-41611.
Teens on the roadside near Ojo Caliente, New Mexico, 1997.
Young men, Chimayó, New Mexico. Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives Negative Number HP.2012.18.751
China Gang in the Old Chamisal Schoolhouse
Three girls near Fort Wingate, New Mexico.
Indian children. Mescalero Reservation, New Mexico. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration, LC-USF
Spanish-American children, Peñasco, New Mexico. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration LC-USF33- 012804-M4
Part of an impoverished family of nine on a New Mexico highway. Depression refugees from Iowa. Left Iowa in 1932 because of father’s ill health. Father an auto mechanic laborer, painter by trade, tubercular. Family has been on relief in Arizona but refused entry on relief roles in Iowa to which state they wish to return. Nine children including a sick four-month-old baby. No money at all. About to sell their belongings. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration, LC-USF34-009749-E
Dust bowl farmer with tractor and young son near Cland, New Mexico. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration, LC-USF34-018299-C
Wife and sick child of tubercular itinerant, stranded in New Mexico. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration LC-USF34-009747-E
Governor Sandoval of the Taos Pueblo, New Mexico. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration, LC-USF346- 002956-E [P&P] LOT 622
Spanish-American people at fiesta, Taos, New Mexico. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration LC-USF33- 012863-M4
Three young ballet dancers, students at Mrs. Knights School of Dancing. Albuquerque Museum Acquisition Number PA1992.5.880, gift of Bob Davis
Miss Vadito at the Vadito Morada – Fiesta de San Larenzo
Questa, New Mexico. Spanish-American boy in the grade school. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration LC-USW3- 018144-E
Sons of resettled farmers. Bosque Farms, New Mexico. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration, LC-USF34- 002978-E
Ojo Sarco, New Mexico. One-room school in an isolated mountainous Spanish-American community, which has eight grades and two teachers. Most of the teaching is in Spanish, the language spoken in the children’s homes, and as a result they rarely speak English fluently. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration, LC-SW3-14522-E, 1942

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Don J. Usner was born in Embudo, N.M., and has written and provided photos for several books, including The Natural History of Big Sur; Sabino’s Map: Life in Chimayó’s Old Plaza; Benigna’s Chimayó: Cuentos from the Old Plaza; Valles Caldera: A Vision for New Mexico’s National Preserve (winner of a Southwest Book Award); and Chasing Dichos through Chimayó (finalist for a 2015 New Mexico – Arizona Book Award). Don contributed a chapter and photographs to The Plazas of New Mexico (also a winner of Southwest Book Award), and writes for periodicals as well. His photographs were featured in the photography journal Lenswork and in an online blog of The New Yorker.