Tuesday, September 1, 2009

before and after

This image dates from 1929 (w/a few touch-ups by me; enlarge for a bit of a fashion show). A penciled caption verso reads Fiesta de San Geronimo, Taos Pueblo. If you compare this old photo (which I happened upon in the museum a couple weeks ago) with the image of the same church (San Geronimo) currently showing in my "Photos from Work and Play" feature on the right, you get a real sense of how much play is in the wheel of "historic preservation" and notions of "authenticity." I took my photo in the summer of 2007 (more of the same here), and posted it here a few weeks ago. Within days, I stumbled upon this very cool old black and white image. Taos Pueblo is a Un*sco W*rld Heritage Site (trying to evade ye olde google search). The chapel was barely open from a recent restoration when I was there. I wonder how many more times it's architecture will be reinterpreted?

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