Q&A with Lynn Adler

  

 

 

Lynn Adler's new book is And So We Moved to Petaca: Portrait of a New Mexico Community. She is a documentary photographer and filmmaker, and is a founder of the San Francisco-based film and photography collective Optic Nerve. She lives in Berkeley, California. 

 

Q: How did And So We Moved to Petaca come about, and how was the book’s title chosen?

 

A: I first went to Petaca, a remote Hispano community in northern New Mexico, in 1970, to visit my friends who had moved there from New York and San Francisco.

 

Over the next four years, I returned periodically to document life in the village: the people who lived there, their homes and animals, their fences and fields, and my friends Marty, Gloria, Claudia, Sherie, and their kids. 

 

Until I began scanning the negatives 10 years ago, these images of Petaca had been tucked away in my darkroom, unseen for 50 years. 

 

Although I have used a still camera for years, my professional focus has been documentary filmmaking. In 2021, my son suggested that I start an Instagram account for my still images, @lynnadlerphotography, and I began posting regularly. 

 

At the end of 2022, I noticed responses from Bill Shapiro, who seemed very focused on my New Mexico pictures. Curious, I Googled him and discovered that he had been editor-in-chief of Life magazine. Life was a big draw for me when I was a youngster; I was always trying to get to the mailbox before my parents so I could have first dibs on the weekly magazine. 

 

Putting nervousness aside, I wrote him and thus began a discussion about my work, about how he could help me and the remote possibility of publishing a book. Bill had moved to Taos, New Mexico, from the East Coast several years before our correspondence, and he was very interested in New Mexico-focused stories, how lucky for me!

 

Over the next four years, we worked on the book, and through Bill's tenacity and wisdom, the University of New Mexico Press agreed to publish this collection of work.

 

The book launched softly in late May this year with an exhibition in Santa Fe, followed by its full release in late June, complete with national outreach and distribution. 

 

The title -- it came to us in a flash, after we tossed around many other possibilities. It felt like the second sentence in a story, as if something happened – “And so we moved to Petaca” -- but what? And it also seemed to beg the question of what happened after moving there.

 

There's a hint of mystery to the title, it's a little provocative and mysterious, and we liked that. It's a book for the curious. 

 

Q: As you noted, the photos were taken in the 1970s--what is happening in this community today?

 

A: When my friends moved to Petaca in 1970, it was home to about 50 Hispanic families, whose ancestors had settled there in the 1830s, as one of the first land grant communities.

 

The only real employment for locals had been a mineral mine, shut down in the 1950s, and the nearby sawmill had laid off most of its workers. In Petaca, most families got by with small gardens and a few animals. Life was hard, but a sense of community remained. Families socialized, worked,, and played together. The place felt alive. 

 

Fast forward to 2026, and things have not improved. Most of the people I photographed have now passed away due to old age, car accidents, or poor health.

 

Because there is no nearby employment, young people have left the area, and it feels very empty. The economics of subsistence farming withered away with land loss, as the Forest Service encroached on their community.

 

Recently, I visited Petaca after many years, and it felt like a ghost town. All the adobe houses I had remembered from the '70s have either crumbled to the ground or were lost to fires. The few familiar landmarks still standing were the buildings that were a bar/dance hall (now all boarded up), the church, and the graveyard. 

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book? 

 

A: An appreciation of the relationship between the Hispano families and my Anglo urban activist friends.

 

My friends were not interested in creating a separate community -- they wanted to learn life skills from the local people, and in turn the locals welcomed them and taught them the basics -- how to use a wood-burning stove, how to mend a fence, even how to build an adobe home.

 

Given the history of suspicion towards outsiders coming into these communities, these relationships in Petaca were rare.

 

I hope readers will gain a deeper understanding of the life that was lived in Petaca, which is now mostly gone, largely due to land loss and lack of any source of employment. 

 

I also hope this book introduces people to an issue these remote land grant communities are dealing with: the continued struggle to hold onto their land.

 

Tension continues between villagers and the federal Forest Service over forest management practices. Villagers expect to use lands near their homes for pursuits such as grazing and wood-gathering. The USFS and Bureau of Land Management continue to hire staff who do not understand the concept of communal village land, favoring the concerns of influential national industries such as recreation, hunting, and mining. 

 

Q: What are you working on now? 

 

A: I have begun working with an author friend to develop stories based on my vast photo archive and her writing. 

 

And continuing to make photographs despite limited mobility due to ongoing health issues. 

 

Q: Anything else we should know? 

 

A: If you don't already follow me on Instagram, please do. Please share And So We Moved to Petaca with friends around the country. It's hard to say that this is my best work, since I haven't stopped working, but it's very good, and I'd love to share this story far and wide. It's a wonderful piece of history in an amazing part of the country. 

 

My mother did have something to do with this, as well. When she died,  I found a secret dark room and a camera, which I brought home with me.

 

I was determined to document the social and political upheaval swirling around me: protests against the Vietnam War, the psychedelic music scene, the Summer of Love, the rise of the Black Panthers, the People's Park demonstrations in Berkeley, and the Chevron oil spill in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

 

And finally, in 1970, I co-founded Optic Nerve, a San Francisco-based photography and video collective. We built a darkroom in the basement of Project One, a pioneering "technological commune" and intentional warehouse community. It served as an interdisciplinary hub for artisans, media makers, and early computer geeks. 

 

Since then I have made documentary films and videos around the world and acted as producer and photo archivist for many PBS films on NOVA, American Experience, POV, and American Masters. My work has also appeared on HBO. 

 

Much of my working life has centered around film, but my still camera has always traveled with me and remains a constant, no matter where I've been or where I am headed next! 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb