The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe is a simple place but packs a very powerful message about this incredibly gifted woman who found her inspiration in the New Mexico landscape. Her bold use of color and shape somehow wake you up to what is around, and you can “see” New Mexico with deeper eyes.
There is a room of photographs of Georgia O’Keeffe taken by her husband, a photographer and leader in the movement of photography as art. I was surprised at how much Georgia cooperated in the cultivation her own image through his photographs. It’s as if she knew that the way that we use image - even images of ourselves - as masks, and that art is a way to break through that image to essence. The very antithesis of what photographers do with celebrities. It reminded me of the photographs that Eugene Meatyard took of Thomas Merton.
There is also a good film about Georgia shown in the museum. The museum is not large but we felt that it acquainted us well with who she was/is, and are much enriched by the knowing.
