Of
all the photos Ketchum has found, Alicia Chavez
likes this one the best. Taken in 1943, it shows
her grandfather Blas, grandmother Fedelina,
and aunt Faustina as they read news that Blas
had won a contest for raising a prize ram. "It
really captures so much, with the way my family
are dressed, and the details of the room,"
she says.
|
Con
Nombre
By
Michael Penn MA'97
Photos courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs
Division, FSA-OWI Collection
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 CŪrdovas, 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.
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.
Michael
Penn is senior editor of On Wisconsin.
To see more images from the Library of Congress files,
go to memory.loc.gov
on the Web. Photographs taken by Ketchum and his students
will be on display August 3-10, during the annual
fiesta in Penasco, New Mexico. Ketchum will also exhibit
his work, along with original images by Lee and Collier,
at the University of New Mexico's Harwood Museum in
Taos during 2003.
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