Virgin de Guadalupe Mural, Ojo Caliente, New Mexico

"Ojo Caliente Guadalupe" 2007 by Steve Ausherman

This Guadalupe Mural is painted upon a weathered wall in the small northern New Mexico town of Ojo Caliente. I took this image on a plastic Holga camera while on a trip to Colorado in 2007. Heading north on route 285, the road seems to form a cut between worn sandstone cliffs on the right and a low valley on the left filled with farmland, modest houses and a thin, twisting creek. Entering the small town of Ojo Caliente and smelling the river mix with blown cottonwood leaves and the sulphur smell of springs, I encountered this mural on an adobe wall to my right. I parked the car and poked around while I occasionally pointed my camera lens between the rusting strands of barbed wire that encircled an empty yard to snap pictures. This Virgin de Guadalupe beams benevolence outwards from the deteriorating crust of the this earthen, adobe wall.