And So We Moved to Petaca
Portrait of a New Mexico Community
$48.88
- Paperback
144 pages
- Release Date
11 August 2026
Summary
A sublime photographic chronicle of the efforts of several counterculture families to adopt a traditional Nuevomexicano life in the tiny village of Petaca, New Mexico, in the early 1970s.
In the early 1970s, there weren’t many women photographers, and fewer still who used their camera to make ethnographic studies. Lynn Adler was a self-taught photographer using an old 35 mm camera her mother had left to her. But her instinct for seeing the collision of cultures, along…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780826369635 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0826369634 |
| Author: | Lynn Adler, Bill Shapiro |
| Publisher: | University of New Mexico Press |
| Imprint: | University of New Mexico Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 144 |
| Release Date: | 11 August 2026 |
| Weight: | 658g |
| Dimensions: | 16mm x 254mm x 203mm |
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Critics Review
“The photographs are a sensitive examination of two cultures trying to have a fidelity to contrasting world views and lifestyles. The images are a touching window into seldom-seen New Mexico histories.” – Miguel Gandert, author of Nuevo México Profundo: Rituals of an Indo-Hispano Homeland and The Plazas of New Mexico
“No place better exemplifies the rich and often challenging cultural narrative of our country than Petaca, a tiny village in Northern New Mexico photographed by Lynn Adler fifty years ago. In an increasingly stratified society, Adler’s pictures show us the best of what photography can reveal: the beauty of connecting with one another. The finest of Adler’s Petaca photos evoke mystery or portray an exuberance for life that overshadows everything around it.” – Alex Harris, photographer and author of Red White Blue and God Bless You: A Portrait of Northern New Mexico
Lynn Adler
Documentary photographer and filmmaker Lynn Adler is a founder of Optic Nerve, a San Francisco–based film and photography collective, and Ideas in Motion. She has made community-based documentary films and videos around the world. She lives in Berkeley, California.
Bill Shapiro is a former editor in chief of LIFE Magazine. He lives in Taos, New Mexico.
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