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.
Amanda and Cameron Powell, Hobbs, New MexicoGeorge holds Baby Cedar after work at
New Buffalo Commune, Arroyo Hondo,
New Mexico, SummerResettled farm child from Taos Junction to
Bosque Farms project, New Mexico, published.
Library of Congress, Farm Security
Administration, Reproduction Number LCUSF34- 001638-EPeñasco, New Mexico, a grade school student
eating a hot lunch.
Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security
Administration, Reproduction Number LCUSW3- 014706-ELaguna 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 2007.20.36Two girls playing by a stream, New Mexico. Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, Negative Number 100272Unidentified 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 001191Boy with Sheep PicurisGerald Viarrial and Gilbert Viarrial, Chimayó, New MexicoJuan 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 142367Two Mexican boys at Agua Fria near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives Negative Number 142367Trampas, 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-CThree Children.
Belen Harvey House photo archives Identifier 4100-09-2017Heaven Chacon in her lowrider VW BeetleA Taos girl, three-quarter length portrait, seated, facing front. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-106253Taos 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.2012.18.751China Gang in the Old Chamisal SchoolhouseThree girls near Fort Wingate, New Mexico.Indian children. Mescalero Reservation, New Mexico.
Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration,
LC-USFSpanish-American children, Peñasco, New Mexico. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration LC-USF33- 012804-M4Part 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-EDust bowl farmer with tractor and young son near Cland, New Mexico. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration, LC-USF34-018299-CWife and sick child of tubercular itinerant, stranded in New Mexico. Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration LC-USF34-009747-EGovernor Sandoval of the Taos Pueblo, New Mexico.
Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration, LC-USF346- 002956-E
[P&P] LOT 622Spanish-American people at fiesta, Taos, New Mexico.
Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration
LC-USF33- 012863-M4Three young ballet dancers, students at Mrs. Knights School of Dancing.
Albuquerque Museum Acquisition Number
PA1992.5.880, gift of Bob DavisMiss Vadito at the Vadito Morada – Fiesta de San LarenzoQuesta, New Mexico. Spanish-American boy in the grade school.
Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration LC-USW3- 018144-ESons of resettled farmers. Bosque Farms, New Mexico.
Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration, LC-USF34- 002978-EOjo 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
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:...
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