In the early 1920s, Cherokee dramatist and poet Lynn Riggs (1899–1954) lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, while recovering from tuberculosis. At that time, Santa Fe was in the process of developing from a small village to a little town that attracted many progressive artists who came to paint the landscape and the indigenous people. They were joined by several social reformers and patrons of the arts, turning Santa Fe into a “Greenwich Village of the West.” Riggs embraced this dynamic mix of Pueblo art and modernism that would soon gain widespread recognition through works such as Ansel Adams and Mary Hunter Austin’s Taos Pueblo (1930) and Georgia O’Keefe’s Ranchos Church, New Mexico (1930–1), and it informs his 1931 film, which he made in collaboration with the cameraman James Hughes.
As the title suggests, the film portrays life in Santa Fe during the course of a single day, a format structuring many city symphonies. Riggs and Hughes evoke daily life in Santa Fe by a series of street views showing the silhouette of a church, pedestrians, cars, an orchestra playing at the Plaza, an artist working in his studio, and so forth. Using poetic intertitles, Riggs and Hughes also develop a poetic mode in their imagery as most of the shots are primarily close-ups that create a high level of abstraction: a hand placing milk bottles in front of doors early in the morning, hands opening doors, a sprinkler on a lawn, machine parts that start to work, a blowing steam whistle, wheels of a speeding car, feet of people walking, a hand plastering a wall, another hand sharpening pencils, et cetera. Riggs and Hughes repeatedly link the small-town setting to the surrounding landscape and the natural elements: shots of a walking donkey, shifting clouds, blossoms, or a little bell moving in the wind indicate that nature rather than industrial modernity determines the place. A ritual rain dance is followed by a rain shower, suggesting an interest in animism, while bringing to mind the fascination for ephemeral effects that one finds in French impressionist cinema.
Santa Fe is first and foremost presented as a place of leisure, however, with sequences showing people swimming, having cocktails in a garden, or taking a siesta. Together with frequent shots of people looking directly into the lens, these images of a carefree environment evoke the conventions of a home movie, whereas other shots are reminiscent of modernist photographers such as Ansel Adams or Edward Weston, both of whom worked extensively in the Southwest.
Steven Jacobs
further reading
Cox, James H., “The Cross and the Harvest Dance: Lynn Riggs’ and James Hughes’ A Day in Santa Fe,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 32, 4 (2015): 384–98.
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