Under New Mexican Skies

by Birdie Jaworski

The sound of the shutter surprises a nesting sparrow. Elena Gallegos points her camera at what seems to be nothing - a wisp of dried sweetgrass, a dusty stone, the crack between two slabs of concrete. She tries to steady her hands. Click. Click. The sparrow flits from one branch to another, curious, aware.

"It's damned difficult," Gallegos sighs. Diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that often impairs the sufferer's motor skills and speech, she retired from her thirty-year career as an Albuquerque elementary school teacher at the age of 58, and began taking photographs.

"I decided enough was enough. If I was only going to have a few good years of fine motor skills left, I was going to darn well enjoy them." Gallegos fit the lens cover over her Nikon. "All of my life, I felt like an artist. All of my life. I taught my students to follow their dreams, and I realized one day I wasn't taking my own advice. I'm just glad my husband, Ray, got to see my photographs before he passed away."

Gallegos shoots the forgotten places, the quiet space between one visual treat and the next. She uses two cameras - both purchased at yard sales - a simple digital camera with a good lens, and an old-school Nikon 35 mm. She walks the alleys of Las Vegas in the dusky hour before sunset, searching for inspiration, for a slice of experience no one has yet dared to catalogue.

"Black and white and gray. That's how I see the world. I use black and white film, or take digital shots and reduce them to grayscale on my computer," Gallegos explains. "I enjoy spending time outdoors. Since Ray passed and I moved to Las Vegas, nature has become my new husband."

A collection of clouds wafts over Hermit's Peak in one of Gallegos' photographs, giving unexpected motion to the static land. In another, her lens peeks through a decaying door in ghost town Loma Parda, allowing the viewer to enter a still sanctuary of stone and memory. Her pieces celebrate the often rough landscape of New Mexico, and capture the state's dream-like consciousness.

"Too many people think they have to be 'good' to be an artist. I'm living proof you don't," Gallegos laughs. "To be a photographer, or a painter, or a singer, you just have to do what you love. Who cares if anyone sees what you see in it? I'm losing my hands, little by little. In another year I won't be able to take these photographs. I'd rather take bad photographs today than wish I had taken them tomorrow."

Gallegos plans to print a collection of black and white New Mexican sky postcards from her growing body of work. Her first gallery show occurred several months ago in her hometown of Las Cruces, where a series of ten photographs lined the walls of a hip internet cafe.

"You can teach an old dog new tricks. You can. You can be anything you want to be, and do anything you want to do. It doesn't matter how young or how old you are. It doesn't matter how good you think you might be at something." Gallegos pushes a stray hair out of her eyes, adding it to the lopsided gray pile on top of her head. "I said yes to my dream three years ago, and now I've had one show, and will soon sell postcards. It's small potatoes, but that's what life is. A big bag of potatoes, if you're smart about it."