The Small Village New Mexico Project (SVNM) was begun in the Spring of 2012. It is a project conducted by the students and instructor in the Journalism 412-Documentary Photography class at New Mexico State University (NMSU). It is based upon the premise that southern New Mexico has a unique culture reinforced by a strong university, a robust agriculture industry and by the profound influence of the nearby USA/Mexico border.
The project concentrates on the small villages that are along New Mexico State Road 28, a two lane road that stretches south-to-north roughly paralleling the Rio Grande. The southern terminus of NM 28 is at the Texas state line west of Canutillo where Farm to Market Road 259 ends. New Mexico State Road 28 is a 30.346-mile-long paved, two-lane state highway in Doña Ana County.
The project focused on Mesilla, Main Street Las Cruces, La Mesa, Anthony and Hatch, New Mexico north of Las Cruces and has included south El Paso, in Texas because of its close proximity to southern New Mexico.
The project was begun -and remains- an instrument of education for students learning to do documentary photography. Repeated field trips during the Spring semester have allowed students to do “immersion photojournalism,” working on the idea that a one-time photo shoot is photojournalism but repeated immersion in a subject is deeper and becomes a photo essay.
Traditionally, at the end of every Spring Semester, the students have produced a small book of their SVNM shoots, and on occasion have displayed their findings in the Hallway Gallery of Milton Hall at NMSU.
As a learning tool, the SVNM project has been an invaluable “real world” exercise for students learning to do the valuable work of photographic documentation.
Small town guy with big dreams, Jesús José Molina “Paita,” La Mesa, March 2019, by Naomi Trejo
