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Yoga classes in Alpine, Marathon & Marfa
Yoga in Nature Retreat at Maya Tulum, Mexico
May 23-30
aimee@luminousbodyyoga.com • luminousbodyyoga.com
Aimee Roberson : 432.386.4747
B LANTON P HOTOGRAPHY
Quality photography for all occasions:
events, portraits and commercial
Nancy Blanton
Photographer
808 N 6th Street • Alpine
432-837-5800
L OST 2401 A N LASKAN
RV P ARK
HWY 118 • ALPINE, TX
432.837.1136
Big rig & tent sites
Full hookup w/ cable
Clean restrooms w/ showers
Laundry
Daily - monthly rates
Pool & playground
RV wash bay
WI-FI Internet
www.lostalaskanrv.com
The Hal Flanders Recycling
Center accepts glass, tin and
aluminum cans, paper, plas-
tics #1 and #2, magazines,
cardboard and more.
Visit: www.alpinerecyles.org
to learn more about how and
where to recycle or call
432.294.3183 for details.
Funding made possible by the Texas
Commission for Environmental Quality
through the Rio Grande Council of
Governments.
26
Cenizo
Bed & Breakfast
and Ecology
Resource Center
Flowers
By Kate
Special occasion
arrangements
432.386.4165
Ave C & N 3rd • Marathon, TX
info@evesgarden.org
not only taught the local
children but also drove the
school bus and prepared
breakfast and lunch for her
students. The images that
resulted from Van Cleef ’s
Candelaria sojourn are mov-
ing and timeless: Johnnie
Chambers, glasses on a chain,
hair styled in a severe topknot
that would not have been out
of place a hundred years
before, is surrounded by shy,
smiling Mexican children.
The school bus in the back-
ground is the only indication
of 20th century civilization.
An old campesino walks
along a dirt path, crossing the
fluid border that separates
Candelaria from its sister
community in Mexico, San
Antonio.
In another photograph, a
solemn young Mexican girl,
dressed in her Sunday best,
stands against a stark white
wall in the Candelaria church,
plastic flowers and a holy pic-
ture the only adornments in
the scene.
These pieces typify the
quiet dignity – the very
essence – that Van Cleef has
drawn out of her subjects and
captured on film. As in the
paintings and photography of
an earlier era, no one smiles or
mugs for the camera: This is
serious business, and people
appear as they truly are in day-
to-day life.
For all the gravitas evident
in many of Van Cleef ’s por-
traits, there’s a wry sense of
humor at work in her photo-
graphs.
In Las Ropas en el Sol, a goat
lounges in the grass as laundry
flutters in the wind near
Candelaria. At the edge of
Second Quarter 2009
the photograph, another goat
trots away nonchalantly, its
hind legs and jaunty tail just
visible on the right side of the
frame. Van Cleef ’s decision to
include this small touch ele-
vates the photograph from a
standard landscape to a wry
comment on domestic life
worthy of comparison with
the whimsical work of Henri
Cartier-Bresson or Andre
Kertesz.
In La Silla Sola, a decrepit
overstuffed chair sits outside
While the time spent get-
ting to know her subjects and
searching out new possibilities
for photographs is long and
intense, it’s only half the job
for Van Cleef, who insists on
doing all her own printing. She
believes that it’s in the dark-
room where the magic really
happens.
With exacting attention to
contrast and saturation, she
turns her negatives into works
of art.
“I’m in love with the silver
Johnnie Chambers with School Children, Candelaria Elementary School,
Candelaria, Presidio County
an
adobe
house
in
Chihuahua, sign of a border
culture where nothing is
wasted or thrown away.
In a candid portrait, Sul
Ross student and farrier
Trevor Carter is flanked by his
horse and dog; the puppy and
the pony sport wider grins
than their owner.
gelatin print,” she says. “It has
a luminosity and beauty,” she
says, that isn’t achievable with
other processes, including
digital photography, which,
she admits, has a place, but
lacks the “inner light” of the
gelatin process.
“Digital black-and-white
prints have a slight deadness,”