Having grown up on the east coast, one of the most common questions I am asked is how did I end up living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s actually a fairly common query for anyone who is not a native of “‘burque,” or of New Mexico in general. In reality, many folks in the west have migrated here from other places. Many in search of warmer weather, a slower pace, a more affordable existence. All of these reasons could apply to my own experience, but none really get to the root of what appealed to me about New Mexico in the first place.

My first impressions of what New Mexico looked like came via artists. Like many people, I discovered the unique landscape and colors via the work of Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams. And though these initial views didn’t exactly call me to this place, it did shape my impression that New Mexico was nothing like the world I knew in New Jersey.

It wasn’t until a few years later, when I studied photography in college that the uniqueness and idiosyncrasies of New Mexico, and Albuquerque specifically, started to seep into my consciousness. I recall discovering the photos of Gary Winogrand, Lee Friedlander and Robert Frank. These artists each shot images here that conveys an oddness, a foreboding, a desolation unique to this place. I found these images perplexing. Not only in what they showed, but how they showed it. I have written elsewhere about Winogrand’s photo of an infant at the edge of the world, but there is also Robert Frank’s image of the desolate view of a lonely car on a distant highway, or his photo taken in a clandestine manner in a bar in Gallup. There is Friedlander’s image shot in downtown Albuquerque: a mishmash of poles, street lights, the Doghouse hot dog stand, and the wonderful dog itself. Toto, we’re not in New Jersey anymore.

The more I learned of Albuquerque, the more enigmatic it became. That dark wizard, Joel Peter-Witkin, creating his jarring work in a South Valley studio. Is this place the freak scene he alludes to? “Who walks these streets after the sun goes down?” I wondered. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

The images of Thomas Barrow, in his series “Cancellations” also held my attention. Of course, one might wonder why anyone would damage their own negatives in the way he was doing. What did it mean to cancel out a photo you took yourself, but still decided to print and display? But what I found more intriguing were the subjects of the photos themselves. Anyone who has spent even a short amount of time in Albuquerque would start to recognize Barrow’s locations, such as the big arrow at the corner of Carlisle and Indian School. As scan of his book would yield fodder for quite the scavenger hunt for a curious Burqueño.

There are also the photographs of Danny Lyon. His book “Pictures From The New World” had a profound influence on my perception of the New Mexico landscape, the light and cultural fabric of this place. The NYC born and bred photographer somehow ended up in Bernalillo, New Mexico… a refugee from the pressures of the relentlessness of urban life, I would guess. I would follow that same path in the early 90s, and here I remain.

There are others, as well. Miguel Gandert, Robert D'Alessandro, Douglas Kent Hall and Patrick Nagatani, for example. As a group, all of these photographers did more to introduce me to the complexity and confounding nature of life in the 505 than any visitor’s guide ever could.