Susan Ressler is an award-winning artist, author, and educator who has been making social documentary photographs for more than fifty years. Her work is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Library and Archives Canada, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and many other collections. Her first monograph, Executive Order: Images of 1970s Corporate America, was published by Daylight Books in 2018. Dreaming California: High End, Low End, No End in Sight, was released by Daylight in 2023. Her retrospective will launch in spring 2025. Ressler makes her home in Taos, New Mexico, USA.
Statement (Rio Grande No. 1)
In 2022 when I made this image, it became the focal point of a self-published small 8×8 book titled “The End… is the Beginning.”
That year the effects of climate change had become evident in Taos, NM. A wind storm destroyed hundreds of thousands of trees, and a fire destroyed more than 300 square miles of the Carson National Forest.
I wrote this in my book next to this photograph:
“There really was so much destruction in 2022: the windstorm that decimated thousands of trees, the wildfire that consumed more than 300 square miles of pristine forest, the lightning strike in my backyard…. Climate change was here, but more than that, after two years of ravaging Covid, it seemed as if Nature had had enough. It was time to cleanse the earth and our psyches – time to begin anew.
Behold the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge spanning the chasm as the river, reflecting the brilliant sky, moves towards the light. The bridge is the 10th highest suspension bridge in the US: suspended in time; suspension of disbelief.
On Friday August 12, members of the Taos Jewish community gathered at this bridge to celebrate Tu B’Av, the incarnation of love. And we remembered a famous dictum from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, a great sage, who once said: The whole world Is a very narrow bridge and the main thing is to have no fear at all….”
I continue to photograph at the Rio Grande Gorge whenever possible, and as the second image (made this past May attests), it never disappoints.
