I actually wrote this list up a while back, but apparently never posted it. But FWIW, here are some of the restaurants we tried in Sante Fe, in ranked order, with some of our favorite dishes. Almost all are (northern?) New Mexico style food. Thanks to Chris for typing up the initial list, to which I have added my own annotations as well.

1. Pasqual’s http://pasquals.com We went there twice for the cheese and green chile tamales, as well as a chile relleno stuffed with melted cheese and fried in a batter. At Pasquals it’s served sliced in half, “omelette style”.  Plus for one of the meals we also had a spicy egg and polenta dish, topped with lots of red sauce. (good, but not pictured below):-)

Chile relleno with red sauce, tamale, beans and rice combo platter

Chile Relleno with red sauce, etc. –  2nd visit

2. Tune Up   http://tuneupsantafe.com The apartment owner’s favorite little place, which served a combination of New Mexican food (we had a breakfast burrito with egg and beans and cheese and red sauce), as well as Salvadorean pappusas (essentially a thick tortilla stuffed with beans and cheese).

3. Counter Culture  http://www.yelp.com/biz/counter-culture-cafe-santa-fe – a real locals feel to this place, where you order at the counter and then they bring you the meal. We had a cheese grilled polenta dish that was outstanding, along with the requisite red sauce.    They were also reputed to have the best cinnamon rolls in town, so of course we had to try them.They were huge – each one was more like a loaf of cinnamon bread.

Cheese polenta with red sauce

Closeup of cinnamon roll

4. Jambo http://jambocafe.net (Afro-Carribean; the chef is from Lamu, Kenya)  OK, so this was our non-New Mexican food day. We had a lentil stew and also a goat stew served with a starchy porridge. Really tasty.

5. Maria’s    http://marias-santafe.com – kind of (to me) a standard mexican style place, with tacos and enchiladas.  The owner of our place commented that she’d only be there to drink Margaritas, as they have something like 100 different types of tequila. We also tried the food; the enchiladas were OK, but the  house-made chips and salsa were quite good.

Anyway, as you can see, we ate quite well during our stay in Sante Fe. So on an a-typically sunny afternoon here in Seattle, we celebrate the food of Sante Fe. But that’s OK. After all, Food on Fridays can take you anywhere.

However, we got a bit sidetracked before going to the Maxwell, as I had an appointment with the curator of a photo archive at a different museum in Albuquerque. It all came together rather suddenly. You see, I had visited photo archives while we Santa Fe, part of my current quest to track down American women photographers from 1850-1920 for a book I’m planning to write.

Before you ask — yes, it’s true that women really were doing photography as early as 1850. As it turns out,  there were a fair number of women who ran successful photography studios in mid-to-late 1800s, in addition to “talented amateurs” who took up photography as a serious hobby. It’s just no one every talks about these women much, and  few people know about them. Even some photo archivists I have talked with, if they don’t happen to have any examples in their archive, doubt that there were women doing photography this early. But it’s true – there were.

Anyway, while we were in Santa Fe, I visited the Palace of the Governors Photo Archive (POGPA). From the archivists there, I got the names of several women who were active in the area during my time period, and there are photos by these women in the archives there.

But there was a bit of a mystery there, too. You see, there was a poster was on display of a photo of a woman advertising  a photography studio:

Advertisement for Cobb’s Studio (photo courtesy of  the Albuquerque City Museum Photo Archives)

I had just learned (from the staff) that Cobb’s studio was run by a husband and wife team, William and Eddie Cobb.  Eddie Ross was a photographer in her own right, having worked for another photography studio in town (also run by a woman!) before she married a rival studio owner, William Cobb.  Anyway, it seemed clear to the staff at POGPA that the man with the camera on the banner was William Cobb, and they suspected that the woman was Eddie Cobb herself.  But oddly,  no one at POGPA seemed to know where the photo had come from, nor how to find the original photo.  The POGPA curator did finally give me contact information for his counterpart at a museum in Albuquerque, so I fired off an email to that man at the Albuquerque museum just after we got to town late in the day on Monday.

10 minutes later my phone rings — it’s the guy in Albuquerque calling me to follow-up! He explains that he is actually not sure about what the story is with that particular photo, as he’s not familiar with it either. But he promises to have an answer by 10am the next morning if I can stop by then.

So the next day,  by the time we get there, sure enough he has managed to track down the photo, which turns out to be in his archives, but neither digitized nor completely catalogued yet. He’s puzzled how POGPA came to have a poster-sized enlargement on the wall next to the curator’s desk in Santa Fe, but at least he’s tracked down the photo.  He’s also got information that indicates that the photos pinned to the the woman’s dress are photos of Eddie and William’s children.

Plus he pulls out a few other photos for me to look at while I’m there by Eddie Cobb and the woman she worked for before she got married, and shows me a tiny part of an exhibit at the museum about the Cobb Studio. A fun and productive morning, all set in motion by the mystery about the photo.

But the story doesn’t end there. Later that night, while searching the Internet, I happened across a notice of periodic lectures in Albuquerque given by a women who is the former photo curator of that same museum. Her lectures are all about the exact women I was researching at the POGPA and in Albuquerque. Chris and I weren’t able to find an email address for her that night, so Chris looked in the phone book (online) and found a phone number for a woman by the same name in town. The next morning before we leave town I take a chance and call the number. Yup, it’s the right woman!  During my conversation with her, it becomes clear to me that a) the man at the museum in Albuquerque has already told her all about me, including my name  b) she was the one who knew what that “mystery” photo was and c) she probably told him how to find it in the archives to show me. What a great resource she will be going forward, too – what fun to find her!

Anyway, that’s an example of how interesting and an unexpected this search for early American women photographers from 1850-1920 has been so far.  The hunt continues … with the hope for this amount serendipity to continue along the way.

Below are a few photos I snapped in between running around to museums, photo archives and visiting new restaurants; those 3 things were really our primary preoccupations while we were in Santa Fe. But a little photography made its way into a couple of our days as well.  Mostly I focus on the sky in the shots that follow, but the one of the sun and shadow is representative of the really extremely strong sunlight, which cast impressive shadows everywhere you looked.

Enjoy.

Scenic Santa Fe Scene #1

Scenic Santa Fe Scene #2

Scenic Santa Fe Scene #3

Sun and Shadow, Santa Fe

“Light as a Feather,” Santa Fe

Sunset over Santa Fe

Chris offers the following animated sequence of these still images for your consideration [note: depending on your browner you may need to click on the photo to open it in a new window to see the animation]:

Shadow Dancer

What the heck is that “dancer” doing, eh? Well, here’s a slowed-down version of the sequence:

Shadow Dancer – Slower

Still puzzled? I know I was — even when he told me that I was the “dancer” in the photo! The only thing I knew that I did when he was taking photos was take a photo of a hilly scene [click on the photo below and then click on the version that opens to get the full size of this image]:

What the Shadow Dancer is Seeing

Yup. The “Shadow Dancer” is waving a cell phone back and forth to get a panorama of the scene before her. Never would have believed it, but that’s what it looks like when a shadow does it.

So there you have it. One of the very few Monday Mysteries that gets solved in the same post.

Enjoy.

The distractions of the past few days include visiting Santa Fe in general, eating some excellent New Mexican and African cuisine, and also spending time learning about some new-to-me woman photographers circa 1900. All of those topics are slated to turn into blog posts soon.

I might have more time to work on the blog in the next few days, actually. Our plan is to spend a quiet Thanksgiving tomorrow here in the apartment. Then there is a chance that a snow storm will lead to us spending a quiet “Black Friday” here as well. Odd to think we’re in the desert and it snows here (sometimes). Stay tuned on how that storm turns out on Friday.

In all fairness to the weather, though, I should point out that the weather here so far has been very nice, although a bit cool (lows below freezing each evening). A few of the trees around still have their colorful fall leaves on them, which led  to an unexpected photo-op:

A tale of two trees, Santa Fe, NM

My caption gives a clue to the illusion:  the leaves are actually on a tree behind  building, while the trunk is on a tree in front of the building. I want to play with this photo a bit more, actually; what you see is pretty much how it came out of the (cell phone) camera,  except I did very quickly use a bit of digital darkroom wizardry to take out an un-photogenic lamp post to the right of the tree. It was really striking to come out of a building and see this in front of us the other day – the yellows really were that vibrant!

Anyway, to all our friends and family, hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving and better weather than is predicted here.

I’m still sorting out notes and photos for proper posts about our adventures. I’m hoping I’ll have a proper post tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s a really quick unedited photo of Burro Alley in downtown Santa Fe:

I don’t actually know if the burro statue is there because of the name, or the name is because of the burro statue. I guess it will have to do as a sort-of Monday Mystery for today.

Anyway, see you back here tomorrow.