As a photographer, New Mexico intimidated me when I first moved here. Everywhere I looked was a grand landscape. But so many talented photographers had made such iconic images of New Mexico already. Who can forget Ansel Adams’ Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico for instance? Or Edward Weston’s photographs of White Sands? I often raised my camera to my eye as I drove or hiked through the mountains and high plains, only to lower it without releasing the shutter. What could I add to the legion of images we have seen on posters and in books, images that told us of the grandeur of the West, the challenge, the uncomplicated beauty. The grand landscape photographers also defined the technical standard of the time—fiercely in focus, long depth of field, awash with fine detail. It wasn’t until I began photographing with a Holga camera that I found a new vision of the land I now call home—a vision that is new to me, at least.

The Holga is a plastic camera, made in China, that is the darling of many fine art photographers. The plastic body doesn’t always fit together tightly. One must either tape it shut after each change of film, or embrace the light leaks that cast streaks across the images it produces. Even the lens is plastic, not optically whole, and it creates dream-like, blurry images with varying areas of focus across the frame. The Holga isn’t cut out for grand landscapes. It is the technical antithesis of the standard set by the photographers of grand landscapes. But it led me to something else, something as Western as long expenses of mountains, horizons and prairie. It led me to ungrand moments, details, and scenes that speak to an interior experience rather than an exterior one. Sometimes tack sharp photographs hold us at arm's length, I think, while less precise images invite us in. My little Holga led me to aesthetic places I wouldn't have found had all those wonderful photographers not photographed the grand landscapes so sublimely.