I hit town in 1968. I came directly from the army in El Paso. I didn’t know anything about Santa Fe, but some friends in the army said, You gotta go. Just go. As soon as you land, check in at Claude’s bar. And that’s what I did.
I blew in here without any preconceived notions, no idea what I was going to discover. And, well, it just blew me right away. Crumbling old adobes, dirt streets, and all of these fascinating people. People who just wound up here and never left. I started documenting the whole thing right away.
So I was working as a professional photographer and that continued for about five years, but then starvation became a problem. You can’t make any money in photography. So I switched and became a jeweler. But I continued taking photographs.
It was always about the people. There were a lot of Hispanics in the neighborhood – my landlord on Apodaca Hill was born there in 1900 and still lived there. That generation was really special, they had a real aesthetic, a real history about them. And that’s all vanished. When they went away, as we all do, their ancestors were not the same people.
In those days, you could rent a studio for $50 a month on Canyon Road or buy a house for $5000. It was unbelievable. Of course, everything transitioned and everything continues to transition. Things don’t stay the same. Interestingly, though, when you look at some of these pictures, not a lot has changed.
I’ve just found some old photos recently. I have a lot of stuff from those years. A lot people have never seen. These are some of them. Viva Canyon Road!
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Photo Douglas Magnus
