San Francisco de Asis, Ranchos de Taos
This is a classic view of the back side of this famous church. To me it suggests a confusion of ideas. The strong geometry of the building is wonderful. It seems utterly defiant in the oncoming storm. Adobe is humble, like the building on the left-hand side, and ancient, like the nearby Taos Pueblo. But this structure is not humble. Twice the people of Taos Pueblo successfully rebelled against Spanish domination in the late seventeenth century. This church, built in the early nineteenth century and considered to be a fine example of Spanish colonial architecture, seems to harbour both of these cultural forces that have, in time, found peaceful coexistence.
I took the photograph in the late 1990s on a Hasselblad V series camera. The present print comes from a scan of one of the negatives from that shoot. Sadly the same unobstructed view of the church is hard to see these days. Classic images due to Georgia O'Keefe and Ansel Adams can be found at:
https://wandering-through-time-and-place.com/2019/11/22/the-rancho-de-taos-and-georgia-okeefe-part-1-of-okeefe-country/