Frederick Hammersley Foundation... New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund at the Albuquerque Community Foundation ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

...and Viewers Like You.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

TRACING THE HISTORY OF EARLY WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS, ALBUQUERQUE MUSEUM'S JILL HARTKE SHARES INSIGHTS FROM CREATING THE EXHIBITION "WE LEAD, OTHERS FOLLOW."

A PIONEER, LOUISE NEVELSON CREATED MONUMENTAL SCULPTURES FROM DISCARDED OBJECTS FOUND ON THE STREETS OF NEW YORK CITY.

THE EXPANSIVE EXHIBIT "THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS: RECKONING AND RECLAIMING" REMINDS US THIS HISTORY IS REAL.

PHOTOGRAPHER MEGAN WYNNE EXPLORES THE INTENSITY SHE FINDS IN THE MOTHER-CHILD RELATIONSHIP.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

WE LEAD OTHERS FOLLOW.

>>Jill Hartke: Women had a really interesting entrance into the field of photography because when photography began in 1839, there was no discrimination built and there were no guilds.

It was open to anybody who had the resources to purchase the equipment to become a photographer.

And so, by the 1850s you have women joining the field of professional photographers and you start to see women coming into their own in terms of being photographers, having their own studios running their own business.

And they would often take other younger women sort of under their wings.

And so, they would show them how to lease the building, how to get their accounts in order, how to actually run a studio, teach them the art of photography, oftentimes teach them the art of backdrop, creating, like, studio props, advertising.

All of these things went into these sort of informal mentorship networks that started popping up in the in the late 19th century for women photographers.

And this was how they got into the field.

The legacy of female photographers in Albuquerque is sort of only a half story because there are all of these photography studios who we know were run by women because you can find their name in this video directory, but none of their work exists.

It was never saved.

On the other hand, we do have examples of several women photographers in Albuquerque who were incredibly successful, some of the longest running photography studios in the city.

Mrs. Albright is sort of the pioneer female photographer for New Mexico, and she got her start because she learned from her older sister, Sarah.

Her background is interesting because she was 18 years old and living in Wyoming Territory when women were given the right to vote.

There was a huge turnout.

75% of the women in Wyoming voted in that first election in 1870, and she saw women be elected to like justice of the peace.

She saw them begin to serve on juries.

And I think this this had an impact on Mrs. Albright throughout her life because, she, from an early age, she saw what the possibilities were for women.

Mrs. Albright had the resources and the means to create an atmosphere in Albuquerque that really fostered empowerment for women.

And because of her high social standing.

Her husband ran a newspaper.

They were friends with the territorial governor.

She was the lady manager for the Territory of New Mexico for the 1893 World's Fair, in Chicago.

And so, she's representing the entire territory, not just photographers, not just women, but she's representing everyone in these national and international exhibitions.

The connections and her determination to sort of elevate not only her own business because remember, she's a successful businesswoman herself.

She's running Mrs. Albright's Art Parlor in Albuquerque, but she's also mentoring both women and men who want to join this field.

And so, she's opening doors for everyone, including Eddie Ross.

Edie Ross was a photographer who later married William Cobb, and the two jointly ran Cobb's Studio which is another really successful long running photography studio here in Albuquerque.

And it began in 1891.

William Cobb dies in 1909 and Eddie runs that studio until the 1940s.

Eddie Ross was Mrs. Albright's assistant around 1888 or so.

You can begin to see the chain of mentorship because then Eddie, Eddie Cobb starts having her own chain of mentorship.

She begins mentoring her daughters and her son in the Daphne begins working with her mother at Cobb Studio when she's about in her early twenties.

Daphne and Alabama Millner are peers, but actually as you move down the line, as you get closer into the 20th century, you start to see women photographers stop using painted backdrops as much, to start using curtains or wooden screens.

Things that they could move around.

As you move into the 20th century, women begin to leave their photography studios and they begin doing a lot of their work outside the studio.

And in the communities.

When you look at Hanna and Hanna or Alabama Millner, it's the same thing they do very few portraits inside the portrait studio anymore.

They're outside.

They're taking community pictures and documenting And so, the informal mentorship becomes a formal mentorship called the Albuquerque Business and Professional Women's Club.

In 1919 women are pretty sure they're going to get the right to vote and they begin formalizing some of some of these organizations.

And it's also not just photographers anymore, you have doctors, nurses, shop owners, librarians, the city clerks all of these women join this formal network and they take an oath of loyalty that they will support younger women, that they will raise everyone up giving their careers to the support and the empowerment of other business and professional women in Albuquerque.

I think women saw the field of photography as sort of this open door, and they marched right through it.

And having the ability to own their own business, to make a very successful livelihood.

I think it's important to recognize that women were choosing it as their career path.

It wasn't a fallback.

It was an option that was open to them.

And they made a success of it.

And in Albuquerque, you see that by looking at the career of Mrs. Albright and the legacy that she left behind, but also all the women that came after her the opportunities that came forward just because of one woman's vision is incredible.

And it had such a huge impact on Albuquerque, on the photography field in Albuquerque, and on women in particular.

REDEFINING SCULPTURE.

Randy Griffey: This spectacular sculpture behind me is titled "Mrs. N's Palace," and it's one of the great works by the American sculptor Louise Nevelson.

It's actually composed of pieces that date back in time to as early as 1964, though it was assembled as a unique work in 1977.

"Mrs. N's Palace" is one of Nevelson's greatest works, but it hasn't been seen at the Met for many years.

Installing it here on the second floor of the Met's modern wing took quite an effort but it was well worth it.

The work itself is comprised of about 130 individual, sculptural collages.

These relief collages that then are attached to a large box.

The sculpture is comprised of scraps of detritus that she collected all across the city.

Creating these abstract, in many cases, relief sculptures, which she then treats primarily by painting in black.

Nevelson described her materials as the skin that New York has shed and that she is scavenging and then giving new life, making art that's both in a way about New York, but also of New York.

In many instances, her original source material is discernible without much effort.

There are boxes from filing cabinets, and from staircases and balustrades where she's repurposed architectural salvage.

Parts are quite heavy in appearance and even sort of aggressive in effect, but other parts are lyrical, elegant, thin, whimsical even.

In other instances her materials are really difficult or impossible to discern and register really as unique abstract sculpture.

The title derives from a couple of sources.

One is that, her nickname in the neighborhood where she lived was Mrs. N, and "palace" is evocative.

She intended this work to be her ideal habitat or a kind of shrine to herself.

This is Nevelson creating her own universe.

An environment that's based entirely on her own sculptural practice and her vision as an artist, which in a way tied wonderfully to her desire to live her own life on her own terms.

ON TRIAL FOR WITCHCRAFT.

Centuries after its notorious witch trials, Salem, Massachusetts is still spellbound.

It's a brew of memorials, historic sites and tourist trails.

It's also doesn't shy away from being a cauldron of camp from Bewitched to Hocus Pocus.

"Hello Salem, my name's Winifred, what's yours?!

I put a spell on you..." But as a new exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum reminds us-the history here is real and it is grim.

"The people involved in this crisis had fears and emotions just like we do, and that this was a harrowing experience for everybody involved."

The show of fragile, rarely exhibited artifacts, delivers us to 1692-when rapidly rising hysteria resulted in a torrent of accusations that brought down some 400 people in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and led to the deaths of 25.

And it was all very diligently recorded says co-curator, Dan Lipcan.

"These are pieces of paper that people wrote on by hand.

These are objects that the people involved owned, a chair that someone sat in, That helps us identify with the people that were involved in this crisis."

That crisis emerged from a set of events that have a chilling resonance today.

"There was extreme weather, there were really dry summers, very cold winters.

There had been a smallpox epidemic.

There was a war to the north.

And there were refugees coming into town from Maine and New Hampshire."

"People begin to look for answers.

Who's responsible for our problems?

Basically becomes an issue of scapegoating, right?

Rushing to judgment, looking for someone to blame for your problems."

Historian Emerson Baker is the author of A Storm of Witchcraft.

He says the blaming was easy.

There was even this 15th century book, the Malleus Maleficarum that was a manual for taking down witches.

Something that had plenty of precedent in Europe.

"What happened in Salem is really just the tip of a huge iceberg between the about 1400 and 1750, which is generally called the great age of witch hunts in Europe, inner colonies, about one hundred thousand people were accused of witchcraft and about half of them were executed."

The accusations began to fly in Salem in January.

By June there was this warrant for the execution of Bridget Bishop-the first woman to be hanged.

She'd initially been acquitted for a lack of evidence.

"Witchcraft is a gendered crime.

About three quarters of the people accused in Salem and elsewhere across time are women."

In Salem, they were subject intense physical examinations that were neatly recorded.

"A group of women and typically a male surgeon were instructed to inspect the accused for any skin abnormalities that might be seen as a sign of the devil's influence.

I know this is one of the few surviving remnants of a jail.

And what were the circumstances in the jail like?

The jail was dirty.

It was infested with vermin.

People were screaming.

Um I think it was a pretty horrific place um to be."

The exhibition acquaints us with how Salem's villagers lived ordinary lives.

The accused embroidered and they had arthritis.

"George Jacobs was somebody who was accused and later executed... And so he used two walking sticks to get around town and in the testimony of folks that that accused him, including his own granddaughter, they mentioned as one of the ways in which he afflicted them was that his specter or his ghost would beat them with walking sticks and with his two canes."

By the spring of 1693, the hysteria faded.

Villagers began to stand up for their neighbors and the community collectively realized it had gone too far-not that it would acknowledge as much, says Emerson Baker.

"I believe that this is the first large-scale government cover up in American history.

When Governor Phips ends the trials, he also issues a publication ban and basically says, it really wouldn't do to have a lot of talk about this.

And we have the one book here we want.

We have Cotton Mather, who is really the apologist for the government, who's written this perfect book describing how no innocent lives were lost.

And we did everything right."

History, of course, would correct course.

And at the Salem Witch Trials Memorial days after the anniversary of when the final group of eight witches were hanged in September 1692, we found the victims were not forgotten.

"(How much does it strike you that people are still coming here placing flowers?)

This story is very much alive with people today.

It resonates.

People know what it's like to be scapegoated, to be to be victimized.

And they'd like to come here to, to pay their respects.

It's a pretty moving space."

EXPLORING MOTHERHOOD.

- I always made art about relationships.

When I became a mother, I was really affected by the intimacy and the vulnerability, unlike any other relationship I'd ever had.

My work is about telling the story of the experience of being a mother.

I was adopted at birth, so it was all so very strange to physically have my own child, and how dependent they were on me.

I never grew up seeing anyone breastfeed, and I did it, which was so intense!

I started to document it.

That was my very first experience of making work on I'm inspired by visual ideas and ways in which I can imagine my kids can engage.

And that requires a lot of thinking and planning because I often have one shot that I can do it.

I don't wanna do something that's not fun for my kids, 'cause then they won't wanna make art with me!

My plan was to become a professional tap dancer, but you can't major in tap dancing in college, so I went into fine art school.

I started out in painting, but I did photography when I was a sculpture major, and then I got an MFA in new genres.

This piece is from my MFA thesis exhibition.

I was interested in 16th and 17th century I thought of them and how they were done as kind of metaphors for human frailty.

And here's an example of something I was inspired by.

It's essentially a cadaver holding open their skin so that you can see their insides.

So it just seemed like a metaphor for frailty and exposing oneself.

This is another piece that I have up in my studio.

It's from a series called "Foundation."

With this series, I thought about the idea of a mother being present or having a trace of herself there, kind of a haunting feeling.

They speak to the invisibility of caregiving.

All kids are good artists!

That's why my husband's an elementary art teacher.

He just pumps the work he sees every day.

It's so inspiring, and it feeds his practice.

And he used to teach college, he used to teach at VCU!

And it's like he can't compare it to the joy he gets from seeing the work of first graders!?

I will drive past your house?

We take our kids really seriously.

We don't take ourselves too seriously.

It's kind of asserting the validity of the creative impulse in the children.

We encourage them, we try to create an environment where they feel free to express themselves.

And sometimes I'm shocked with how comfortable they are.

- [Girls] Let's go!

- This project I've worked on with my kids, I revisited a concept I've already worked with in the past, and that piece is called "Mask of Motherhood."

- [Girl] I'm painting a mask.

- I actively choose to give up control and see what will happen and how far they would take it, because you don't really know!

- This doesn't look like you're sick at all!

- No, it looks like you're happy, happy, happy.

- I wanted to experiment in giving up control, a metaphor for being a parent, being a mother.

I wanted to revisit the idea with three children, and they're different ages now.

Fear no more, fear no more Fear no more My son was delighted, but you could see him climbing on my It was more violent than last time.

For some reason, that dance, it's like a circus.

That dance is thrilling to me.

It's exciting.

Just free experimentation, which I think is beautiful.

The more I think about my work, and it's evolved, I think about the fear of failure.

I've started realizing more the kind of everyday struggle of motherhood combined with the joy and humor of it.

Like with a lot of my work, it's an exercise of letting go, allowing myself to feel the anxiety and doing it anyway.

I feel like when my pieces are successful, they have that element to them of me really allowing myself not to know what's gonna happen and not being afraid.

The experience of any relationship is not all perfectly serene, nor should it be!

And that's kind of how motherhood is in general.

It's an exercise in being in control and then selectively letting go of control.

You can't completely be in control all the time.

How do I let them be themselves and grow as a person and yet also protect them and keep them safe?

That's a struggle I have every day as a mother.

So I investigate it in my work.

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"UNTIL NEXT WEEK, THANK YOU FOR WATCHING."

Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Foundation... New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund at the Albuquerque Community Foundation ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

...and Viewers Like You.

(CLOSED CAPTIONING BY KNME-TV)