Stronger Together
The yin and yang of lace curtains and a pole ladder at Acoma Pueblo.
It was August. My camera club was welcomed into the ancestral location of Acoma Pueblo early on a cloudy New Mexico day. The early time meant that other tours would not have arrived. Also, we had a better chance of having some overcast before the sun burned off the high clouds. The overcast was important to the lighting that we wanted for our photos.
Sitting over 360 feet above the valley floor, a mesa with sheer cliffs on every side, the site was chosen in the 11th century for the protection that it offered. Even now there is no water and no electricity. Each home passes down from mother to daughter because the tribe is a matriarchical society. I imagine a tracing of history from daughters to mothers and grandmothers going back before written records. So much of this world revolves around male lineage, by contrast it feels like their society honors the women that ensured the Acoma survival. Surely it was a higher power that brought about this phenomena that runs counter to most of world history. I choose to believe so.
Sometime before his book, “The Mural Project 1941–1942” Ansel Adams visited Acoma. I wonder to myself if he had his huge wooden view camera or if he had already bought his first Hasselblad. With my camera, I knew that I walked the same walk as Ansel in this sacred place. His photographs of the church, the cisterns, and the homes look much the same as the pueblo looks today.
My photo of this Acoma home tells me a story of a woman who hung lacy curtains in her windows and a man that built the traditional pole ladder for his family to enter and exit safely. Even though the concept of yin and yang is Chinese in origin, I see it clearly here. Feminine curtains and masculine pole ladder are interconnected in the lives of the people that call this place their home. In this photo, they are captured coming together.
Stronger together.
