Students, professor discover family history in New Mexico

It is a coincidence befitting a Charles Dickens novel: University professor discovers cache of photographs, lost for more than half a century. Depicted are elder family members of an administrator at the same university where the professor works.

This story, however, is not fiction. We will get to the particulars momentarily. Meanwhile, earlier chapters of Dickens’ hypothetical tome would find Cavalliere Ketchum, professor of photography, ensconced in the Library of Congress. He is poring over 17,000 assorted photos, searching for specific images of sheepherders in the isolated mountains of northern New Mexico.

Taken by Russell Lee and John Collier Jr. as part of a New Deal Farm Security Administration project, the photographs are Ketchum’s passion and the subject of his research for more than 35 years. The reason, he says, are the subjects themselves.

“Of the 650 people in 450 photographs, I have been able to identify 150. Ninety of those are alive today and still living in the area,” he says.

Their stories are riveting, Ketchum has found. Take, for example, the saga of Miguel and Gabriel Chávez. Miguel was 10 years old when Lee and Collier came through New Mexico with their cameras. At the time, Miguel was consumed by the idea of going with the rest of the men to move the flocks to higher pasture, but he was deemed too young. Then Miguel got his wish — but at a steep cost. His beloved brother Gabriel was drafted during World War II, and Miguel took his place with the shepherds that summer.

Readers may recognize the story — it became two motion pictures and a Newbery Award-winning book, all titled, “And Now Miguel.”

However, none of the Chávez family knew about the original photos until a few weeks ago. By chance, Ketchum learned that UW–Madison’s dean of students, Alicia Chávez, is Gabriel’s daughter.

Stories like Miguel’s have entranced Jennifer Price of Franklin, Wis. Last year, she was finishing up her senior year as an art major, and signed on with Ketchum’s project. A first-year MFA candidate in the UW–Madison Department of Art this fall, Price and three other students (Ya Ling Tsai, Juan Yllow and Theo Streibel) last summer visited more than 20 villages in the Taos area.

“We immersed ourselves in the everyday culture of these places: the annual fiesta, a village parade, the crowning of town princesses, a local car show (with only four cars competing), traditional flamenco dancers,” Price says. The group stayed about two weeks and often ate in local community centers.

“The stories the people of the communities were willing to share with us about their way of life were just as valuable as the photographs we took — what the people told us gave the photos context, and historical, moral and religious balance,” she says.

Those feelings were mutual. “The older people, who were the subjects of the historical photos, absolutely loved the students,” Ketchum says. “As in many places, the younger residents often move away, and it must have been refreshing for the elders to talk to younger people from another place.”

Ketchum and the students made new images of the people in Lee and Collier’s original photographs, and included their children and grandchildren. They also gave the subjects copies of the historical photos. Not surprisingly, Ketchum is known in the mountain communities around Taos as “the professor who brings us our history.”

“Some of the older people call me ‘the professor who brings us our youth,'” he says.

The students’ work, along with reproductions of some of the historical photos, plus other artifacts of the journey, will be on exhibit Oct. 19-26 in the seventh floor gallery of the George L. Mosse Humanities Building.

Among the exhibition photos will be images of Alicia Chávez’s father, uncle Miguel, grandfather Blas and an aunt. “I can’t wait to see the photos,” Chávez says. “We didn’t have any pictures of them from those years.”

The students’ and Ketchum’s own photos will go on the road beginning next summer, traveling Aug. 3-10 to the annual fiesta in Penasco, N.M. The original historic images by Lee and Collier will be on display with Ketchum’s work in 2003 at the University of New Mexico’s Harwood Gallery in Taos.

Meanwhile, Price says the students’ work will move forward.

“We will be curating exhibitions locally and for community centers in the towns we visited,” she says. “We also will continue to correspond with the people we met in those villages — we’ll be returning to those areas to further develop our ongoing photo-research and maintain the important cultural ties we will need for our work.”

Ketchum says the project illustrates the way that past, present and future influence each other. “It’s fascinating to see how things have been handed down from the 1930s and ’40s to our own time,” he says. “Some aspects of the culture have changed dramatically and evolved. On the other hand, some are completely timeless.”