Melting Chimneys, Fort Union National Monument (click to enlarge)
Here is an image of the chimneys that remain from the buildings at Fort Union National Monument. This image reminds me of the soft melting pocket watches in the Dali painting The Persistence of Memory.
As Dawn Adès wrote, “The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order”. Pretty deep stuff. But then again, the above image is a symbol of the slow erosion and collapse of Fort Union over time. As you walk around the grounds, you will notice many braces holding up walls, and areas where workers are repairing the adobe remnants of the walls. Abandoned in 1891, it is hard to imagine the remnants lasting another 126 years.
I guess this could also be one of those glass half full/glass half empty tests. Are the chimneys melting into the blobs, or are the chimneys arising out of the blobs?
Fort Union Chimneys: N35 54 22.23 W105 00 50.67
New Mexico Road Trip Locations (click to enlarge)
Here is a map of the photography locations I visited during a recent business trip to New Mexico. This is a screen capture from the Map Module in Adobe Lightroom. The Map Module makes it easy to visualize where you have been and select images from a certain location.
Using the numbers in the boxes as references, here are the locations I visited. Future posts will cover each of these locations in some detail. Starting in Albuquerque and proceeding clockwise:
37 – On this trip I focused on the old motel signs along Route 66 in Albuquerque.
75 – Old Town Sante Fe
22 – Pecos National Historic Park
67 – Fort Union National Monument
34 – Cadillac Ranch
6 – Cannon Air Force Base
11 – Taiban
3 and 3 – Billy the Kid Grave Site and Museum
46 – Carlsbad Caverns (not shown)
26 – Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument – Gran Quivira
5 – A random ranch on the way to Gran Quivira
7 – Mountainair
21 – Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument – Quarai
I visited these locations over two weekends, and lots of miles on my rental car!
