“Landscape Dreams, A New Mexico Portrait” – Movie Trailer
from Craig Varjabedian on Vimeo.
This is a movie trailer, a short film if you will, to announce and celebrate the publication of my new book “Landscape Dreams, A New Mexico Portrait” by the University of New Mexico Press. It was created, directed and edited by Rebekkah Jasper of Jasper Film Productions in New Mexico. We hope you enjoy the presentation.
ABOUT LANDSCAPE DREAMS, A NEW MEXICO PORTRAIT:
Craig Varjabedian’s photographs, made over the nearly three decades that he has lived and worked in New Mexico, range over all the image-making forms—landscape, portrait, and still life— to offer a remarkably complete, varied, and original portrait of what many call The Land of Enchantment. White sand desert, cloud-capped peaks, ancient adobe ruins, groves of autumn cottonwoods all find their place here. Intimate, personal, and yet iconic, the photographs capture a land and its people in a collection that will be warmly welcomed by those who already love New Mexico but serve also as an inviting introduction for newcomers to its diverse and captivating uniqueness.
Fittingly, the ninety photographs, all beautifully presented in elegant duotone reproductions, celebrate the hundred years of New Mexico’s statehood begun in 1912. Here, paired with images of Native American sites that go back to earlier millennia, such as the ruins at Bandelier National Monument, are artifacts of the modern world, like the familiar outline of a pumpjack in an oil patch and a low-rider Cadillac outside the wall that protects the Santuario de Chimayo.
Complementing the eloquent pictures are three essays by New Mexico writers whose intimacy with and affection for the land are no less deep than the photographer’s. Marin Sardy writes knowledgably and feelingly of the history of the state, and the ways in which many other writers of the past have captured its allure, its mystery, and its kaleidoscopic reality. Jeanetta Calhoun Mish offers a poet’s special insights into the particular character of Varjabedian’s photographs. Hampton Sides, a New York Times best-selling author offers an appreciation of Craig Varjabedian’s true gifts and urges the reader/viewer to “Take time to savor this careful distillation of the real New Mexico.”
Please take a moment to view more of my photography at www.craigvarjabedian.com
