Diego
Margaret Randall
Created : 1983
Donated : 2009
Medium : Photography
Dimensions: 26 inx30 in
Located: 4th Floor,West Hallway
Margaret Randall is a photographer, a writer, a poet, a social activist, and an oral historian. She was born in New York City in 1936 and has lived for extended periods in Albuquerque, Seville, Mexico City, Havana, and Managua. She lived in Latin America for twenty-three years (Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua). She currently lives in Albuquerque but continues to travel extensively to teach and lecture.
Diego, a portrait of a Nicaraguan man, is one of many images from her portfolio of life in Nicaragua. She Answers Back is a portrait of a young Albuquerque woman, Linda Gilkey, and is one of a series of images depicting Gilkey’s love of softball contrasted with her discomfort in wearing a dress.
Despite her extensive travels, Randall’s enchantment with New Mexico began when she was a young woman:
“Images of blue sage, bright green rabbit brush, and purple mountains took up residence in my eyes. Dancers with bear and deer headdresses and small bells at their ankles moved across them as if animating a film strip. I dreamed of those colors and people, what I imagined early morning dew on cactus arms must smell like, the endless blue of those huge skies. When I finally saw that land, I finally felt I had come home.”
Randall’s books, poetry, and photographs continue to be tools for social change. They are manifestations of her lifelong celebration of the tenacity of the human spirit and the power of creative expression.
