Dead In San Ysidro

The dogs had been unexpected.

Three of them, all running full-bore at the business end of a plume of red dust as soon as I shut off the engine. Two black, one brown, three tails oscillating at 4400 rpms.

They appeared friendly enough but I suppose so did Hitler just before he crossed into Poland. Luckily the whiskey was holding strong and my courage was high so I bailed out and set to strolling around Iglesia de San Jose with the Holga.

By this time the dogs had lost all interest. They abandoned me. As they trotted away in disgust I noticed one had only three legs. This filled me with an immediate sadness.

I had rolled into San Ysidro a defeated man. Coming to the village off a three day roost at the base of Cabezon Peak (aka “the Big Nipple”) my mind was not precisely tuned to the business of making pictures. The wind had been an absolute weeping whore, offering no profit from the trio of days spent there except for a dust crusted mattress and ill intentions.

The Hive (my portable darkroom) blew away the first evening. This left me no other option but to climb down into the canyon to retrieve it as the New Mexico night bled in. I felt nothing but disdain and murderous thoughts. There had been strange lights in the sky. Insane notions of UFO’s rising up from the south. Black helicopters and demented cows. All this mixed with complex existential ideations of self-detachment and foul misadventures.

But this church.

This church made everything feel warm and meaningful and the air now seemed much more thin. I was elevated. My mind was placed back onto a clear and pure shelf. I felt calm.

Nothing but the 6x12 would do. This place demanded the broad frame. The wide frame. Anything tighter would absolutely cheat the blood of the space.

The Holga 120Pan 6x12 is a photographic piece of shit…or so the uninitiated might attempt to persuade you. For me, it’s beautiful. It’s my plastic Venus. Spitting out a negative literally double the width of my Hasselblad (6x6) the 120Pan lends the eagle eye to otherwise terrestrial scenes.

Plastic body and plastic lens, the ultra-wide manifestation of my beloved Imperial XII weighs not much more than the film it eats. I love the Holga 120Pan. It’s nearly too good for its own sake. The center sharpness and relative lack of the “Holga Blur” somehow feels wrong for this camera but at the same time oh so right.

The original 120N Holgas got famous for being garbage cameras. That was the charm. Their plastic lens elements pitched up extreme vignette and extreme distortions and yet through photographers like David Burnett the worst qualities of the Holga somehow grabbed the photographic world by the throat and, to this day, have never let go.

As I walked around Iglesia De San Jose I felt any number of creeping eyes upon me. I was pouring sweat. I wreaked of bourbon mingled with the cumulative stench of a week in high-country desert. Those dogs had birthed from somewhere and as I stumbled through the dust there in San Ysidro I could sense my thin welcome was down to the soggy white stick.

Fire.

Wind.

Fire.

Wind.

The 120Pan devours film like a bulimic at an In n’ Out Burger. “Wind to the odd numbers” is the mantra. 1–3–5–7–9–11. You get six chances for glory on a 120 roll.

I was unprepared for the cemetery. Being a man who tracked down the actual cemetery from Ansel’s “Moonrise Hernandez” I am no stranger to the ragged beauty of pocketed fields of rest. But this place felt different. A boneyard full of locals and soldiers. Federally gifted tombstones lent the realization that this place, like many small villages across the southwest, made up of people who have every reason to hate the United States Government, turned over their favorite sons and daughters to the meat grinder in the transpirence of any number of White Man’s wars. It was not correct for me to be slinging a camera here. At least not now.

Leaving this place felt wrong and right. I hadn’t planned to be here. I literally rode the wind and landed at this tiny map dot as I hacked my way towards Albuquerque. I’ll be back to San Ysidro and return to San Jose mission. When? Unclear. But I know this with a certainty I cannot fully explain.

All text and images copyright 2023 by Adam Welch unless otherwise indicated.

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