October, 2018
When in 1978 John Szarkowski, the head of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, curated the show “Mirrors and Windows,” he divided the work two camps. The photograph could be defined as a mirror or a window. Where mirror was a romantic expression of the photographer’s sensibility projected onto things and sites of that photographer’s world, a window was the exploration the exterior world in presence and reality
I’ve always considered that when I photograph, I photograph mirrors. However, when I went to Fort Stanton in New Mexico, I was inspired to photographs its windows—looking into its windows, looking out of its windows, looking back in time in its windows—to attempt to capture something of the reality of this strange fort.
And, as a fort in New Mexico Fort Stanton is a strange fort. Expecting to see adobe, one finds green and white buildings more familiar to the East Coast. Build in 1855 it served to protect the White settlers from the Apache Indians. In 1899 the fort became a tuberculosis hospital for theMerchant Marines. By 1928 over 236 patients were treated, the majority of which were sailors. In 1941, 39 German Sailors were interned at the fort, and later during War II the camp held up to 652 German detainees. Four died at the camp and are buried in the nearby cemetery. Several Japanese were also interned at the camp. After the War, as a state hospital it continued to serve as a TB hospital treating Native Americans, and then, until 1990 as a mental ward.
Now only traces of the past remain here. Mostly what you see are the buildings with peeling paint, empty buildings, and the grass parade grounds. It is a quiet and empty place. Every where there are windows to look in and windows to look out of. As the photographer I am, I find the mirrors of this place, I see the reflections and leave finding even my own.