Dawn broke this day across the perfect clarity of a pre-autumnal sky, peaks silhouetted in sharp relief against the pale orange of the same new-angled sun that turns the local earth to fire.
We are entering early this land’s most beautiful season, one in which earth and sky are medicine infused with the eternal mystery of the light.
It works differently here than in other places, this alchemy of the light. The clay here is tinged with both red and gold, shot through with silvery mica, and and it conspires with the sun to deceive the greedy into believing that whole cities here are wrought of precious metal.
The truth, of course, is much more valuable than any golden ramparts — and much less subject to acquisition. The valuables here are those of earth and sky, water and light, history and ancestry, culture and tradition. It is, to echo the title of Wings’s one-man show some years ago, in which this image first appeared, both ancestral place and sacred space, one not for consumption or colonial occupation.
The actual framed original that appeared in the show is long since gone (although signed and numbered prints are available in two sizes, and it is possible even to order a full-size print matted and framed). But at the time of the exhibition, this appeared as the final in a series of ten images that constituted the photography portion of the show, each selected and ordered to tell a specific story. He included narrative text with each to guide the viewer through his world, and this was, to my mind, both natural and logical conclusion and the most affecting of them all. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Emergence was its name:
EMERGENCE
It is who we are; how we came to be.
It is our history and identity, captured in one image.
Up from the darkened depths, rung by rung, on a ladder built of the same materials with which the spirits have blessed us.
Rung by rung, out of the darkness, seeing first the warming of the red earth in the golden light as we rise.
Rung by rung, up into this world, reaching for the turquoise sky.
We repeat this ritual daily in our homes, in our ceremony, in our lives.
It reminds us that we are Red Willow, the People of Taos Pueblo, and we live in the light of a thousand years of tradition.
Signed on white matting; black wooden frame.
Size including frame: 18.5″ by 24.25″.
$775 + $125 shipping, handling, and insurance.
SOLD.
This image is, I think, perhaps the best one Wings has ever produced among the many thousands of photos he’s shot over many decades. Light and shadow, composition and color — all come together perfectly by any standard, even utterly detached from context and culture. One need not have any knowledge of location, people, place, or tradition to appreciate the way its constituent elements come together to create a haunting and starkly beautiful whole.
But for those who do know, for Wings and his people, there is resonance in every line, every shadow. It’s not merely captivating aesthetically; it’s perfect thematically, as well. For traditions that include stories of emergence, it is the very archetype of process and act: out of the shadows and into the light.
It’s more than that, too, more and less at once. We think of “emergence” as a soaring, aspirational concept, one involving not merely betterment but some sort of transcendence, and, indeed, that aspect of it has been entirely coopted and commodified by the local colonial culture, down to the placement of mass-produced wooden ladders, shaped with somehow perfect inaccuracy and propped against the sides of the faux-Pueblo Revival McMansions that dot the stolen landscape. Ladders leading nowhere.
But the point of the ladders was practical in the extreme, hewn of local wood, lashed originally with sinew although nails are used now. They provided entrance and egress to this land mass’s oldest standing homes, an architecture designed with safety as much in mind as shelter, architecture itself emerging organically from and of the earth. The clay walls are practical, too, and withstand the test of time far better than any McMansion; our own home is built with adobe rather than the thin veneer of plaster over frame seen in the proliferating construction of houses that will be listed for millions, then stand vacant for months or years.
The, of courses, there are shadow and sky — dark and light, the opposing forces that face off at the top and bottom of the image. Blue sky, red earth, black shadow, golden light: these are the primary colors of place and space and season here, the elemental materials whence all else comes.
And that is the other gift of this season, too. Where the rest of the world greets autumn with trepidation, here it is cause for celebration . . . when the light washes over the land, revealing the building blocks of this place and space in all their elemental, colorful glory. This is, after all, a place where earth and sky, shadow and light, are more beautiful, and more valuable, than any city of gold.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
