August 58

A black and white photograph of five pairs of gloves atop a wooden table.

ARTIST STATEMENT

“Writers taught me how to see. Painters and photographers didn’t teach me how to see. Writers taught me how to observe. Bach taught me how to think through his music. Every time you think you know what he’s going to do next, he does something brilliant and unbelievable. It’s a constant working on a theme, which he expands and uses. Pure genius. I learned about design from painters, musicians and writers."

"So, I became a photographer after an early life as a musician and found to my surprise that I hadn’t wasted a minute. The same words are used – tone, line, ensemble, balance – and all the things I thought about and used in music were, across the board, related to photography. I also discovered becoming well equipped in a number of art forms is very important. It allows you to more easily move in your own art form.” Myron Wood, 1993
(From an interview with Journeys Magazine, Colorado Springs, CO, Fall 1993)

A prolific photographer of the Southwest from the late 1940s through the late 1980s, Myron Wood is perhaps best known for his work in New Mexico with the Native Americans of Taos Pueblo, with the Catholic Penitente brotherhoods of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, and for his celebrated photographs of artist Georgia O’Keeffe and her Abiquiú, New Mexico home. Around the Southwest, Wood made a name for himself with photography work funded by the Ford Foundation (1959–63), the Bonfils Foundation (1963), the Pueblo Public Library (1973–80), the Waco Foundation (1979), and the Pikes Peak Regional Library (1980). Wood provided photography for five photographic books about the Southwest that he collaborated on with his wife, Nancy Wood, including A Ballad of the West (1963); West to Durango (1964); Little Wrangler (1966); Central City, Colorado, Big Mountain Country (1969), and Hollering Sun (1972). In addition, Wood’s photography was highlighted in Deborah Edge Abele’s The West-side, and Introduction to its History and Architecture (1983) and Christine Taylor Patterson’s O’Keeffe at Abiquiu (1995). Since 1991, the Pikes Peak Library District’s Special Collections has been the home of the Myron Wood Collection, which includes Myron’s negatives, prints, and papers.
(Pikes Peak Library District website - digital collection)