Top Taos?

I’ve never been to Taos, New Mexico but the The Church of St. Francis of Assisi is very familiar, having been photographed and painted by many. James Dansiger posted three photographs, by Ansel Adams, Laura Gilpin and Paul Strand – all intrigued by the forms of the rear of the building – the other day in Spirit West and asked readers to pick their favourite – and also to send in their own pictures.

Danziger says you can no longer take a view like Adams et al, as the adobe church is now surrounded by power lines and buildings.  In Reader Comments,  he includes a number of more recent photographs, which perhaps suggest the situation  isn’t as bad as he suggests. His readers don’t manage to come up with any very great pictures – and display their lack of taste by preferring Adams to Strand. But more interesting is the image at the top of that second post, another image of the back of the church, inviting us to guess who took it.

Looking at it, and particularly the tonality and and hooded figure in the foreground my mind immediately jumped to the great Spanish pictorialist and master of the direct carbon process, Jose Ortiz Echague, but a closer look – by clicking on the image – told me I was wrong – perhaps misled by a poor reproduction of an indifferent print. I won’t give the game away, but look carefully at the top edge of that picture and you too may immediately come to the same – correct – conclusion as me.

You need a clue? Page down

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Those Leicas were very fiddly to load! But even when he got it wrong he almost never cropped.