Con Nombre
By Michael Penn MA'97
With patient tenacity, a UW professor is linking the subjects of a famous photo collection to their descendents and, at long last, giving them names.
In February 1943, the photographer John Collier, Jr. tumbled off the chilly, high desert plain of northern New Mexico and onto the doorstep of a Spanish-American rancher. The house was warm, with sheepskins on the floors, and Collier was invited in. During the next several hours, he took pictures of the rancher and his family — photographs that eventually would become part of the archives of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a Depression-era federal agency that, under the pretense of government public relations, assembled one of the best-known collections of documentary photographs in existence. Along with such notable image-makers as Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, and Walker Evans, Collier traversed the country, making thousands of memorable photographs that would help to record the face of America emerging from economic hardship.
With patient tenacity, a UW professor is linking the subjects of a famous photo collection to their descendents and, at long last, giving them names.
In February 1943, the photographer John Collier, Jr. tumbled off the chilly, high desert plain of northern New Mexico and onto the doorstep of a Spanish-American rancher. The house was warm, with sheepskins on the floors, and Collier was invited in. During the next several hours, he took pictures of the rancher and his family — photographs that eventually would become part of the archives of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a Depression-era federal agency that, under the pretense of government public relations, assembled one of the best-known collections of documentary photographs in existence. Along with such notable image-makers as Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, and Walker Evans, Collier traversed the country, making thousands of memorable photographs that would help to record the face of America emerging from economic hardship.
But the photographs Collier made that day are as striking for what they don't reveal as for what they do. His photograph of two of the rancher's young sons, for example, hints at a mystery that lies beyond the scope of Collier's lens. In the image, the boys stand side by side in matching embroidered sweaters. But while the older one regards the camera eye to eye, with a measured gaze, his little brother, who is perhaps nine, wears the impish grin of a boy who is hiding something.
The big secret, it turns out, is the boy himself. Like his brother, he is anonymous, unidentified by caption or history. The label on the photograph, which resides among 170,000 images from the FSA project in the Library of Congress, provides only this information: "CÛrdova (vicinity), Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. Sons of a Spanish sheepman."
Leafing forward or backward through the sheaves of black-and-white photographs in the archives bears out thousands of similar stories. From Alabama sharecroppers to Oklahoma migrants to Wisconsin mill workers, the faces of the FSA collection are earnest, compelling, and, with very few exceptions, nameless.
The big secret, it turns out, is the boy himself. Like his brother, he is anonymous, unidentified by caption or history. The label on the photograph, which resides among 170,000 images from the FSA project in the Library of Congress, provides only this information: "CÛrdova (vicinity), Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. Sons of a Spanish sheepman."
Leafing forward or backward through the sheaves of black-and-white photographs in the archives bears out thousands of similar stories. From Alabama sharecroppers to Oklahoma migrants to Wisconsin mill workers, the faces of the FSA collection are earnest, compelling, and, with very few exceptions, nameless.
Nearly six decades after John Collier snapped the picture of the rancher's sons, another photographer followed his path through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains north of Santa Fe. Driving a battered AMC Matador, Cavalliere Ketchum navigated along what locals call the "high road" — a series of snaking, dusty lanes that ascend from Santa Fe into the dazzling indigo of the New Mexico sky. His target was a remote collection of Spanish and Indian villages that are found only on the most ambitious of maps. He, too, was looking for the face of America. But the America he sought was one faded into the sepia of an old photograph, one that he wasn't sure still existed, and one that he had little idea how to find.
Ketchum, a professor of art and UW-Madison's primary teacher of photography for more than three decades, didn't go to the New Mexican highlands to re-create Collier's work. He went to finish it. For nearly half of his sixty-four years, Ketchum has been in a slow, patient quest, retracing the steps of Collier and other FSA photographers in an attempt to find and identify the people whom they captured on film. Grasping time in snatches whenever classes and other academic commitments allow, he returns to New Mexico to comb the dozens of tiny pueblos and Spanish-speaking communities between Santa Fe and Taos that Collier and Lee photographed years ago. With each visit, he totes a thick file of Xeroxed photographs — the collection of history's ghosts whom Ketchum calls, in their lingo, sin nombre, without a name.
Ketchum, a professor of art and UW-Madison's primary teacher of photography for more than three decades, didn't go to the New Mexican highlands to re-create Collier's work. He went to finish it. For nearly half of his sixty-four years, Ketchum has been in a slow, patient quest, retracing the steps of Collier and other FSA photographers in an attempt to find and identify the people whom they captured on film. Grasping time in snatches whenever classes and other academic commitments allow, he returns to New Mexico to comb the dozens of tiny pueblos and Spanish-speaking communities between Santa Fe and Taos that Collier and Lee photographed years ago. With each visit, he totes a thick file of Xeroxed photographs — the collection of history's ghosts whom Ketchum calls, in their lingo, sin nombre, without a name.
Attaching names to those faces — and there are hundreds in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains alone — is a mammoth task, one that Ketchum can't hope to achieve in his lifetime. But he can't fathom leaving it undone, either. He is driven by a desire to complete the unfinished jigsaw puzzle of the FSA collection, which he believes yields a fascinating, albeit fragmentary, look at American lives and cultures.
Like many people of his generation, Ketchum recalls seeing FSA photographs first as a young and curious boy. Taken between 1935 and 1943, they were essentially a propagandist masterstroke of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration. Wanting to show the struggle of farmers and other rural Americans — and hence the need for federal support programs — the government commissioned the massive project, disseminating images widely to newspapers and magazines. FSA works appeared prominently in such national publications as Look, Life, and Fortune, as well as in exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art and at the 1936 Democratic National Convention.
Like many people of his generation, Ketchum recalls seeing FSA photographs first as a young and curious boy. Taken between 1935 and 1943, they were essentially a propagandist masterstroke of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration. Wanting to show the struggle of farmers and other rural Americans — and hence the need for federal support programs — the government commissioned the massive project, disseminating images widely to newspapers and magazines. FSA works appeared prominently in such national publications as Look, Life, and Fortune, as well as in exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art and at the 1936 Democratic National Convention.
In a day before television, when photography provided the only visual imagery most people had of remote lands and unfamiliar lives, the photographs made a lasting impression. A 1939 special edition of U.S. Camera Annual called the collection "the most remarkable human documents ever rendered in pictures." Poet Archibald MacLeish wrote "Land of the Free" after seeing FSA images of American poverty, and countless other artists were similarly influenced. Ketchum believes that John Steuart Curry may have drawn upon an FSA photograph when painting the mural that hangs in the Biochemistry Building.
Some evocative FSA images — such as Lange's heart-rending portrait of a migrant mother with her children or Evans's careful images of Southern sharecroppers — helped define urbanites' mental geography and ethnography of their nation, and have retained great recognition. The accuracy of the portrayals is debatable; FSA shooters followed specific scripts and were instructed to play up certain themes. But no one questions the artistic vision of those behind the lens, or their ability to bring life to two dimensions.
Some evocative FSA images — such as Lange's heart-rending portrait of a migrant mother with her children or Evans's careful images of Southern sharecroppers — helped define urbanites' mental geography and ethnography of their nation, and have retained great recognition. The accuracy of the portrayals is debatable; FSA shooters followed specific scripts and were instructed to play up certain themes. But no one questions the artistic vision of those behind the lens, or their ability to bring life to two dimensions.
"What I saw in their work was a great sense of humanity," Ketchum says. Raised in Arizona, he vividly recalls the images of Southwestern ranchers and cowboys whose stories he felt he understood from shared life experiences. "I grew up among the people I saw in those photographs," he says.
The FSA works remained an influence as Ketchum pursued his own artistic career. During the 1960s, as a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, he traveled into many of the same villages the FSA photographers had documented, although he didn't know it at the time. His dissertation combined his photography from the small Spanish villages in the southern part of the state with samplings of traditional stories and folk music — something the FSA very well might have done if it had been born in a multimedia age.
It was only years later, after Ketchum had come to UW-Madison, that he began plumbing the FSA collection. He applied for a grant from the Graduate School to study at the Library of Congress, where he intended to pull images from the northern New Mexican villages between Santa Fe and Taos. While examining the black-and-white prints in Washington, he had a startling realization. He recognized several people in the photographs.
The FSA works remained an influence as Ketchum pursued his own artistic career. During the 1960s, as a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, he traveled into many of the same villages the FSA photographers had documented, although he didn't know it at the time. His dissertation combined his photography from the small Spanish villages in the southern part of the state with samplings of traditional stories and folk music — something the FSA very well might have done if it had been born in a multimedia age.
It was only years later, after Ketchum had come to UW-Madison, that he began plumbing the FSA collection. He applied for a grant from the Graduate School to study at the Library of Congress, where he intended to pull images from the northern New Mexican villages between Santa Fe and Taos. While examining the black-and-white prints in Washington, he had a startling realization. He recognized several people in the photographs.
Ketchum has a photographer's eye for detail, and an extraordinary visual memory that can recall people and places he first saw years before. It may seem fantastic that someone could recognize in a thirty-year-old picture the face of a person whom he'd met perhaps once or twice, but for Ketchum it's nothing out of the ordinary. That gift launched his career within a career.
He took the photographs back to Chamisal, a town high up among the cottonwoods and orchards sixty miles north of Santa Fe. "I asked around at post offices and grocery stores," he says, "and finally someone said to me, 'Ay, that's my cousin. Where did you get this? You should show it to him.' "
In Latino culture, to be sin nombre is a terrible consequence. It is to be more than just without a name, but without connection or culture. It is to be lost. In some communities, to take in a wandering stranger is to make that person con nombre — to give him or her identity. At that moment, Ketchum realized his mission. He wanted to bring all those lonely travelers home.
He took the photographs back to Chamisal, a town high up among the cottonwoods and orchards sixty miles north of Santa Fe. "I asked around at post offices and grocery stores," he says, "and finally someone said to me, 'Ay, that's my cousin. Where did you get this? You should show it to him.' "
In Latino culture, to be sin nombre is a terrible consequence. It is to be more than just without a name, but without connection or culture. It is to be lost. In some communities, to take in a wandering stranger is to make that person con nombre — to give him or her identity. At that moment, Ketchum realized his mission. He wanted to bring all those lonely travelers home.
Although merely a remote corner of the bigger puzzle, New Mexico seemed a logical place for Ketchum to begin assembling the pieces of history. He returned to the Library of Congress and culled 450 large black-and-white prints from a collection of twenty thousand photographs taken across the American Southwest. He examined them closely, singling out 650 unique faces. Of those, eight were identified in captions.
Ketchum set to work on the rest, returning to New Mexico during summers, logging thousands of miles, and paying expenses out of his pocket. Given the scant clues offered by the photo captions, the process was strictly gumshoe diligence. For most of the photos, he had only the name of a town, leaving him little choice but to drive straight into it and begin asking anyone who would talk to him, "Do you know who this is?"
The world of the high road is one that functions by its own rules, almost entirely independently from mainstream ways. Villages like Penasco, Chamisal, Truchas, Ojo, and others in some ways more closely reflect the era of Spanish exploration than modern times. Many land rights are still governed by treaties signed with the Spanish government after the Mexican War. Farmers still use the long ditches, known as acequias, that their ancestors chiseled into the mountains four hundred years ago to irrigate the same fields. Water or soil can be as important a currency as dollars and cents, and English, if spoken at all, is used only when Spanish won't suffice. It's not the sort of place that strangers can roll into — waving old pictures of relatives — without some risk.
Ketchum set to work on the rest, returning to New Mexico during summers, logging thousands of miles, and paying expenses out of his pocket. Given the scant clues offered by the photo captions, the process was strictly gumshoe diligence. For most of the photos, he had only the name of a town, leaving him little choice but to drive straight into it and begin asking anyone who would talk to him, "Do you know who this is?"
The world of the high road is one that functions by its own rules, almost entirely independently from mainstream ways. Villages like Penasco, Chamisal, Truchas, Ojo, and others in some ways more closely reflect the era of Spanish exploration than modern times. Many land rights are still governed by treaties signed with the Spanish government after the Mexican War. Farmers still use the long ditches, known as acequias, that their ancestors chiseled into the mountains four hundred years ago to irrigate the same fields. Water or soil can be as important a currency as dollars and cents, and English, if spoken at all, is used only when Spanish won't suffice. It's not the sort of place that strangers can roll into — waving old pictures of relatives — without some risk.
Although he doesn't speak Spanish fluently, Ketchum, who has Latino roots, says, "I can speak English with a Spanish accent." He invested years warming up the long-established families of the mountains, winning their trust, establishing boundaries, and, eventually, learning their histories. He handed out copies of the FSA photographs and made judicious use of his own camera. He learned that in northern New Mexico, you can often still trade goods for cuentos — stories of life and customs, and so he traded photographs for information.
As the years went by, he began to learn to whom the faces in the old images belonged. He was surprised to discover — but perhaps shouldn't have been, given the constancy of the place — that many of the people he was looking for hadn't moved much at all from where Collier and Lee had first found them.
At times, when Ketchum arrived with his photographs, people were as astonished to see their younger selves as they might have been to see a long-dead relative. Matilda Lovato, for example, nearly fainted when Ketchum introduced himself with a photo of her and her daughter, Elsie, taken in 1940 in their home in Chamisal. But soon, Lovato, who still lives in Chamisal, was spilling stories and fond memories. Passing through Questa, New Mexico, Ketchum wandered into a store he recognized from FSA pictures and found it being run by the grandson of the woman originally photographed. The young man became so excited that he left Ketchum to operate the store while he ran to find his grandmother.
As the years went by, he began to learn to whom the faces in the old images belonged. He was surprised to discover — but perhaps shouldn't have been, given the constancy of the place — that many of the people he was looking for hadn't moved much at all from where Collier and Lee had first found them.
At times, when Ketchum arrived with his photographs, people were as astonished to see their younger selves as they might have been to see a long-dead relative. Matilda Lovato, for example, nearly fainted when Ketchum introduced himself with a photo of her and her daughter, Elsie, taken in 1940 in their home in Chamisal. But soon, Lovato, who still lives in Chamisal, was spilling stories and fond memories. Passing through Questa, New Mexico, Ketchum wandered into a store he recognized from FSA pictures and found it being run by the grandson of the woman originally photographed. The young man became so excited that he left Ketchum to operate the store while he ran to find his grandmother.
"It can come as a great shock to have someone show up with these photos," Ketchum says. But he adds that most people express both pride at having been part of history and gratitude for having it restored. Rarely have the people Ketchum has found recalled the FSA photographs being taken, and none had copies of them. In those days, a camera would have been a rich person's toy, and certainly a foreign object on the high road, where to live well was to survive. The photos from the government archives are like pages from the family albums that they could never afford to keep.
Once, as Ketchum shared a meal with some people to whom he had given photographs, an elderly woman referred to him as "the professor who brings us our history." Another at the table disagreed. "No, no," she insisted. "He is the professor who brings us our youth."
Whatever he's bringing to the photo subjects, Ketchum is also indemnifying their place in the FSA files. He is now confident of the identities of more than 150 people who are not named in the FSA photographs, and he intends to pass along to the Library of Congress the names he discovers so that they can be appended to the images.
"I feel my responsibility toward these people is that they're identified at the Library of Congress," he says. "They've been anonymous for too long."
Once, as Ketchum shared a meal with some people to whom he had given photographs, an elderly woman referred to him as "the professor who brings us our history." Another at the table disagreed. "No, no," she insisted. "He is the professor who brings us our youth."
Whatever he's bringing to the photo subjects, Ketchum is also indemnifying their place in the FSA files. He is now confident of the identities of more than 150 people who are not named in the FSA photographs, and he intends to pass along to the Library of Congress the names he discovers so that they can be appended to the images.
"I feel my responsibility toward these people is that they're identified at the Library of Congress," he says. "They've been anonymous for too long."
To a point, Ketchum's project is an answer to Shakespeare's musing, "What's in a name?" While FSA records don't offer a definitive rationale for why the subjects remained anonymous, it seems clear that it was no clerical accident. James Curtis, author of the FSA history and critique Mind's Eye, Mind's Truth, suggests that the project's handlers were influenced by the social progressivism of the day. They wanted the FSA collection to have an everymanism that transcended the individual lives or circumstances of the people in the photographs. "Stripped of their identities," Curtis writes, "they became the common men and women whose plight the Roosevelt administration was working to improve."
Dorothea Lange's famous Migrant Mother, for example, appears to have been left anonymous on purpose. When Lange found the woman with her children in a California pea-pickers camp, she spoke to her briefly to ask permission to take pictures, but she made no attempt to learn her name. "It was not necessary," Lange later wrote, saying that the woman's face captured "the essence of the assignment."
Dorothea Lange's famous Migrant Mother, for example, appears to have been left anonymous on purpose. When Lange found the woman with her children in a California pea-pickers camp, she spoke to her briefly to ask permission to take pictures, but she made no attempt to learn her name. "It was not necessary," Lange later wrote, saying that the woman's face captured "the essence of the assignment."
It's plausible that the FSA photographers were following the norms of social science, which traditionally has kept the identities of its research subjects private. Few things are as public as a face, however, and few faces have been as public as the Migrant Mother's. It seems reasonable that someone might eventually want to look for her. In 1975, photographer Bill Ganzel did just that, as part of a project to trace the lives of Oklahoma migrants featured in the FSA collection, which eventually became the book Dust Bowl Descent. He found Florence Thompson, the woman who thirty-nine years earlier huddled with her children for Lange's picture, living in Modesto, California. Thompson, who had ten children, died in 1983.
In Dust Bowl Descent, Ganzel writes that the project made him feel "more like a detective than a photographer." With such work, he and Ketchum have moved the FSA collection beyond artistry to anthropology, which has opened it to a new school of researchers who are using it to tell new stories about life during the Depression — and about what can be revealed by photographic records. Ketchum's students, who have been weaned on healthy portions of cultural pluralism and respect for individuality, are generally less interested in seeing the FSA subjects as representative motifs for political agendas. More often, they're asking who the people are and what their lives were like. They're keen to hear the individual instruments that make up the symphony of FSA images.
In Dust Bowl Descent, Ganzel writes that the project made him feel "more like a detective than a photographer." With such work, he and Ketchum have moved the FSA collection beyond artistry to anthropology, which has opened it to a new school of researchers who are using it to tell new stories about life during the Depression — and about what can be revealed by photographic records. Ketchum's students, who have been weaned on healthy portions of cultural pluralism and respect for individuality, are generally less interested in seeing the FSA subjects as representative motifs for political agendas. More often, they're asking who the people are and what their lives were like. They're keen to hear the individual instruments that make up the symphony of FSA images.
"It seems like [the FSA] just wanted to show a photograph," says Ya-Ling Tsai '01, one of four graduate students whom Ketchum took to New Mexico last summer. "They didn't pay that much attention to actually knowing people, to finding out who they are. I think who they are is a very important part of the photograph."
Tsai, a native of Taiwan who is pursuing an MFA in photography with an interest in visual anthropology, says she wanted to go to New Mexico "to get to know people's lives." In the villages, the students splintered off, following separate families for hours or days at a time. Tsai spent a day with a graying woman from Chamisal who taught her how to make tortillas and showed her the bleaching animal skulls she had in her backyard. It was quite a while before Tsai took her camera out of her bag, but she regards the time she spent listening to the woman's stories as essential for making a picture.
"If you want to document people's lives, you have to get to know their lives first," she says.
Tsai, a native of Taiwan who is pursuing an MFA in photography with an interest in visual anthropology, says she wanted to go to New Mexico "to get to know people's lives." In the villages, the students splintered off, following separate families for hours or days at a time. Tsai spent a day with a graying woman from Chamisal who taught her how to make tortillas and showed her the bleaching animal skulls she had in her backyard. It was quite a while before Tsai took her camera out of her bag, but she regards the time she spent listening to the woman's stories as essential for making a picture.
"If you want to document people's lives, you have to get to know their lives first," she says.
Lately, Ketchum's search has had a tinge of desperation. He's running out of time. Not only is he getting within a few years of retirement, but the people he's looking for are pushing the envelope of longevity.
The young boys in the matching sweaters, for example, would by now be entering their seventies. Their youth, frozen on silver nitrate for all these years, has silently slipped away. And if a camera shutter can't stop the march of time, then a professor nearing his own twilight surely can't.
"It really scares me," he says. "We can still find these people, but we have to do it fast. It's going to have to be done in the next five to eight years."
The clean mountain air seems to have preserved many of the people Ketchum has been seeking. He has found numerous FSA subjects — even those who were adults when Lee and Collier came through — still alive and alert in the towns that raised them. He has located a woman who is now 105, and others who are in their nineties. Enlisting students has also helped. Ketchum is able to work more quickly, and he has passed on some of the tricks he knows for reading the visual cues in photographs — such as using magnifiers to read fliers on the walls of churches or license plates on vehicles.
The young boys in the matching sweaters, for example, would by now be entering their seventies. Their youth, frozen on silver nitrate for all these years, has silently slipped away. And if a camera shutter can't stop the march of time, then a professor nearing his own twilight surely can't.
"It really scares me," he says. "We can still find these people, but we have to do it fast. It's going to have to be done in the next five to eight years."
The clean mountain air seems to have preserved many of the people Ketchum has been seeking. He has found numerous FSA subjects — even those who were adults when Lee and Collier came through — still alive and alert in the towns that raised them. He has located a woman who is now 105, and others who are in their nineties. Enlisting students has also helped. Ketchum is able to work more quickly, and he has passed on some of the tricks he knows for reading the visual cues in photographs — such as using magnifiers to read fliers on the walls of churches or license plates on vehicles.
This fall, he and art professor Truman Lowe will take a group of students to the Smithsonian Institution, where Ketchum will lead a seminar on his research methods. One of the students' projects will be to identify and locate a family of Oklahoma migrants from a 1939 FSA photograph.
But there is a sense of passing in New Mexico, and it's not just the subjects that Ketchum worries will perish. The culture itself seems to be withering on the bone. "Younger people are not staying," Ketchum says. "They want more than the ability to make a subsistence living. The abuelitos and the abuelas are there, but in most cases, their grandchildren have moved on. I don't know what will happen to these villages once they're gone."
Jennifer Price '01, one of the students who went to New Mexico, says that some of the elderly people she met seemed lonely, despite having raised large families. Price made photographs of a woman who lived alone on a farm outside one of the towns. Her barn, long ago retired and falling apart from disuse, is routinely pilfered by petty thieves, and her husband and most of her relatives are now buried in a graveyard beside the house. "She told me, 'I have all this land. I don't even know what I'm going to do with it,' " Price says.
But there is a sense of passing in New Mexico, and it's not just the subjects that Ketchum worries will perish. The culture itself seems to be withering on the bone. "Younger people are not staying," Ketchum says. "They want more than the ability to make a subsistence living. The abuelitos and the abuelas are there, but in most cases, their grandchildren have moved on. I don't know what will happen to these villages once they're gone."
Jennifer Price '01, one of the students who went to New Mexico, says that some of the elderly people she met seemed lonely, despite having raised large families. Price made photographs of a woman who lived alone on a farm outside one of the towns. Her barn, long ago retired and falling apart from disuse, is routinely pilfered by petty thieves, and her husband and most of her relatives are now buried in a graveyard beside the house. "She told me, 'I have all this land. I don't even know what I'm going to do with it,' " Price says.
The students also witnessed traditional festivals, some of which have been going on since before the Revolutionary War. They're still glamorous affairs of color and pride, although these days only small handfuls of people participate. In some years, villages have to choose their "Queen of the Acequia," the ceremonial town princess of water, by default, since only one girl of the proper age lives there.
Alicia Fedelina Ch·vez, a professor of educational administration and a native of the region, says she knows firsthand the culture Ketchum is trying to record. Jobs and education have taken her away from the area, but she says she feels responsibility to preserve and promote her heritage from afar. The former dean of students at UW-Madison, she studies diversity in higher education, and says Ketchum's work "reminds me why I choose to study culture. It's so important to recognize how it defines people."
Alicia Fedelina Ch·vez, a professor of educational administration and a native of the region, says she knows firsthand the culture Ketchum is trying to record. Jobs and education have taken her away from the area, but she says she feels responsibility to preserve and promote her heritage from afar. The former dean of students at UW-Madison, she studies diversity in higher education, and says Ketchum's work "reminds me why I choose to study culture. It's so important to recognize how it defines people."
Ch·vez knows something about cultural ambassadorship. Her family settled near Taos in the 1500s and has tended sheep there ever since. When her aunts and uncles speak, you can hear traces of the original dialect their ancestors brought with them from Spain, untainted after four centuries. Her father, Gabriel, and uncle, Miguel, were the basis for the movie And Now Miguel, a semifactual account of Miguel's desire to become a man by joining his older brothers as they moved the family's sheep flock high into the mountains. Later a Newbery Award-winning children's book, the story is well-known throughout the Americas; when he was nineteen years old, Gabriel Ch·vez won a Fulbright to travel around South America, showing the film and sharing the story of his young life with fellow farmers. For the son of a poor sheepherder, the opportunity was unheard of, a once-in-a-lifetime chance.
That is why Alicia Ch·vez understands how important it is for Ketchum to find the people who were the FSA's nameless ambassadors. "My beliefs about research and scholarship are that we should try to contribute something to the lives of the subjects we study," she says. "I'm very proud that Cavalliere is contributing by giving back these memories. And what a wonderful gift he's giving."
"It's certainly the most rewarding thing I've done in all my years at this university," says Ketchum. "Frankly, I'd hang my photographs in Chamisal or Penasco before the Museum of Modern Art. [In those places], I have to deal with the people that they're about. They're not anonymous."
That is why Alicia Ch·vez understands how important it is for Ketchum to find the people who were the FSA's nameless ambassadors. "My beliefs about research and scholarship are that we should try to contribute something to the lives of the subjects we study," she says. "I'm very proud that Cavalliere is contributing by giving back these memories. And what a wonderful gift he's giving."
"It's certainly the most rewarding thing I've done in all my years at this university," says Ketchum. "Frankly, I'd hang my photographs in Chamisal or Penasco before the Museum of Modern Art. [In those places], I have to deal with the people that they're about. They're not anonymous."
For all his success in locating the lost souls of the FSA files, Ketchum was for years frustrated by what should have been his simplest find. John Collier's photographs of the rancher's sons had him stumped. On many fruitless trips along the high road, he began to wonder if he would ever find that little boy and decipher his knowing smile.
The problem, ironically, was that some of the photographs Collier took were identified. The photo of the boys indicated that they lived in CÛrdova, in Rio Arriba County. Another image named their father as Blas S·nchez. Ketchum went to CÛrdova, a mountain town well south on the high road, but no one knew the man. Strangely, no one even recognized the house or the landscape. He searched the town's cemeteries, but not only did he not find Blas S·nchez, he encountered very few S·nchezes at all, certainly not enough to suggest a large family living there.
It was only in a speck of an outpost off the high road known as Llano de San Juan that Ketchum caught a break. A teacher there said the man in the photo resembled her fourth cousin. "But she said, 'He doesn't live in CÛrdova. He lives in Los CÛrdovas, way up north,' " Ketchum says.
The problem, ironically, was that some of the photographs Collier took were identified. The photo of the boys indicated that they lived in CÛrdova, in Rio Arriba County. Another image named their father as Blas S·nchez. Ketchum went to CÛrdova, a mountain town well south on the high road, but no one knew the man. Strangely, no one even recognized the house or the landscape. He searched the town's cemeteries, but not only did he not find Blas S·nchez, he encountered very few S·nchezes at all, certainly not enough to suggest a large family living there.
It was only in a speck of an outpost off the high road known as Llano de San Juan that Ketchum caught a break. A teacher there said the man in the photo resembled her fourth cousin. "But she said, 'He doesn't live in CÛrdova. He lives in Los CÛrdovas, way up north,' " Ketchum says.
He got back in his Matador and drove seventy miles across the mountains to Los CÛrdovas, seated near Taos on the desert plateau below the range. It was there that a man looked at the photograph and pointed over Ketchum's shoulder toward a house. Although Ketchum didn't know it, it was the house in which Alicia Ch·vez's father grew up. The young boy with the devilish smile was Gabriel, standing next to his big brother Blas, Jr.
"You can see someone typing away in Washington, D.C., saying, 'S·nchez, Ch·vez, what's the difference?' " says Ketchum. The difference, it turns out, was the distance between anonymity and the father of a UW-Madison colleague. The short stroll to Alicia Ch·vez's office — and to her father's name — might have taken Ketchum a few minutes at lunch one day. Instead, it took fifty-eight years.
"You can see someone typing away in Washington, D.C., saying, 'S·nchez, Ch·vez, what's the difference?' " says Ketchum. The difference, it turns out, was the distance between anonymity and the father of a UW-Madison colleague. The short stroll to Alicia Ch·vez's office — and to her father's name — might have taken Ketchum a few minutes at lunch one day. Instead, it took fifty-eight years.
In February, Fedelina Ch·vez, the wife of Blas Ch·vez, Sr. and Alicia's grandmother, passed away. Her death, fourteen years after her husband's, came just four months after Alicia first saw the family pictures that she had not known existed. To Alicia, the confluence of these events seems not simply a cosmic coincidence, but a grand stroke of fate.
Ketchum, who by this point in his work has grown used to coincidences, is equally flabbergasted by the bizarre circuit that led back to Madison. After being led to the Ch·vez house in Los CÛrdovas, Ketchum caught up with Alicia's uncle Miguel, a former master craftsman who now owns a vacation rental business in Taos and carves angels from cedar in his free time. Miguel helped Ketchum identify his relatives in the old images. Blas Ch·vez, Sr. evidently was a favorite subject of Collier's, and with Miguel's help, Ketchum unearthed more than a dozen photographs of the Ch·vez family, taken during two separate visits. Casually, Miguel asked Ketchum, "What university did you say you're from?" — and thus was fit that last elusive puzzle piece that reveals the image.
Ketchum, who by this point in his work has grown used to coincidences, is equally flabbergasted by the bizarre circuit that led back to Madison. After being led to the Ch·vez house in Los CÛrdovas, Ketchum caught up with Alicia's uncle Miguel, a former master craftsman who now owns a vacation rental business in Taos and carves angels from cedar in his free time. Miguel helped Ketchum identify his relatives in the old images. Blas Ch·vez, Sr. evidently was a favorite subject of Collier's, and with Miguel's help, Ketchum unearthed more than a dozen photographs of the Ch·vez family, taken during two separate visits. Casually, Miguel asked Ketchum, "What university did you say you're from?" — and thus was fit that last elusive puzzle piece that reveals the image.
Days before exhibiting the photographs on campus last October, Ketchum contacted Alicia and gave her copies. "You don't know what this means to my family," she told him.
"We don't have photographs of our family," she said later. "That was a wealthy person's thing to do." Looking at the photograph of her father as a boy, she smiled. "He has the same rascally look on his face as he does now. I think he must have been born with that look on his face."
Some years after posing for Collier, Gabriel Ch·vez became a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, serving in the air defense command. After retirement, he moved back to the ranch, where he now tends sheep and takes care of the many elderly people in his extended family and community.
"We don't have photographs of our family," she said later. "That was a wealthy person's thing to do." Looking at the photograph of her father as a boy, she smiled. "He has the same rascally look on his face as he does now. I think he must have been born with that look on his face."
Some years after posing for Collier, Gabriel Ch·vez became a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, serving in the air defense command. After retirement, he moved back to the ranch, where he now tends sheep and takes care of the many elderly people in his extended family and community.
After her grandmother's death, Alicia joined her father one morning as he strode purposefully up from the valley and onto the plain, taking in the same vista captured by Collier's camera. They walked silently, hoping to spot the family of coyotes that frequents the land, and enjoying the solitude of the desert. The altitude and the chill made the air as sharp as needles. The sky was so blue, Alicia says, that it hurt her eyes.
Gabriel told cuentos as they walked, recalling his parents and the forays he made as a child into the looming purple peaks. After a while, he fell silent, tending to his private thoughts. Alicia didn't pry or try to fill the open spaces with idle chatter. She was just happy to be home.
Gabriel told cuentos as they walked, recalling his parents and the forays he made as a child into the looming purple peaks. After a while, he fell silent, tending to his private thoughts. Alicia didn't pry or try to fill the open spaces with idle chatter. She was just happy to be home.
