Our cultures are perfect examples of “living history,” where the word “living” functions as both adjective and verb. Our daily lives are indeed “throwbacks” in some ways, and yet, they’re fully contemporary, too. It’s not merely that we walk in two worlds; it’s that our own world fully embodies the sacred hoop, an unending link of history and ancestry and culture and tradition, a world in which we are inextricably bound both with the ancient ones and with those yet to be born.
It gives the whole social media phrase “Throwback Thursday” a whole different meaning, since for us throwing back is simultaneously also bringing forward, and more, it is being now.
In recognition of this existential dynamic, we’re launching a new #ThrowbackThursday series here, one that I expect to run indefinitely. Instead of more tangible, three-dimensional works, it will feature Wings’s photography — a medium that, through his eyes, deserves far greater exploration here anyway — and it will examine his work through historical and temporal lenses, among others. In some cases, as with this week’s selection, I’ll highlight one of his photos from that week’s Monday Photo Meditation; in others, I may choose one from an older post, or one that no one else has yet seen.
A word of warning: They will tend to feature what most viewers will regard as unusual subjects. To me, that’s where much of their beauty and artistry lie. Here, most people want photos of two things: within the confines of the Pueblo itself, the architecture (which means North House or the church); without, landscape views of Pueblo Peak. That’s largely it.
But there’s so much more. More than that, what one sees differs enormously with who is doing the showing. No one can show you what Wings sees when he looks at this place, the lands that are his and his people’s ancestral home, except Wings himself. And so, as he chose to do with the photographs he presented last year in his one-man show, Taos Pueblo: Ancestral Places, Sacred Spaces, the works that he offers here will take a very different approach from the usual, a highly personal one that allows the viewer into his own space, to see through his own eyes images and perspectives that can be found nowhere else.
Today, I want to revisit one of his photos from our Monday post — one that, to me, captures images and themes especially suited to this week before Easter. It evokes the sights and sounds and smells of the planting season, sensations from my own childhood as well as his, sensations inextricably bound up with Spring itself.
He took this photo last year, late one afternoon at the end of March. It was one of those days by Which Taos Pueblo and the surrounding area are identified: the air sharply, brilliantly clear, cold, a slanting afternoon sun sharing one last warming embrace with the earth before retiring for the evening. On such days, the sky is near-indigo, the air gold; all the colors are deeper, the outlines starker, existence itself more intensely alive. He captured a variety of images that afternoon, three of which appeared in Monday’s post. But this one, to me, is something special.
That plough has been on this particular bit of land for a hundred years, perhaps more. It belonged to Wings’s grandfather, and perhaps to his father before him; it was what they used to plough and till the fields where we now make our home, fields that boasted acres of corn and beans and squash and other crops. The work back then, of course, was all done by hand; if you were lucky, you guided the plough, which was pulled by a horse in traces. If you were not so fortunate as to have a horse, you and another male family member jointly pulled and pushed. Wings grew up using this very plough on this very land. Today, we mostly use more modern equipment, but not always: Also last year, he repaired the plough’s ancient wooden handles and used it for a little minor shallow ditching.
For years, though, working or not, it has spent its seasons by one of the gardens, a reminder of lifeways past and present: of traditions of preparing the earth, of ploughing, of tilling, of planting, traditions that we maintain today. The piles of dried and yellowed grass speak to the importance of clearing out the undergrowth, the detritus and dormancy of winter just past. The stones, which will be used as weights and dams when irrigation begins in a matter of scant weeks, look in the waning sunlight like something yet alive, like giant glowing eggs: perhaps housing not baby chicks but a fledgling hope, nonetheless.
In this image, the early grass just beginning to spread across ground left yellow by winter, the sun’s late rays glancing off silvered wood and rust-cloaked metal, the past holds the promise of warmth and light and abundance, of longer days and softer nights and a bountiful harvest yet to come.
~ Aji
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All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
