"I was a geek in high school," admits 19-year-old photographer
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Eve-Lauryn LaFountain, but as soon as the words have left her mouth they sound entirely implausible. Her stylish highlighted bob and her graceful confidence speak the language of the in-crowd, and her indie rocker look isn't fooling anyone: The girl is cool.
Growing up immersed in the Santa Fe art scene has given LaFountain an edge that her college peers just don't have-hell, she isn't even 20 and her photographs have already graced the walls of the Museum of Fine Arts.
To be here now, however, isn't necessarily something she wants:
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The Santa Fe art scene "is a good thing and a bad thing, in the same way that New York City is-they're both great places for young artists to get discovered, but at the same time, everybody is a young artist trying to get discovered," she says.
She comes back here to do Indian Market in the summers but for now she spends most of her time in Elmhurst, Mass., at a small liberal arts school called Hampshire College, which she chose for its open-ended curriculum, a pick-your-own-adventure type of thing. For most kids her age, this unstructured approach to academics is a welcomed break from the pressure of having to decide on a career path. For LaFountain, it is just the opposite: It allows her the freedom to do exactly what she wants.
"Political Activism in the Avant-Garde Through Film and Photography," she cites as her ostensible major. "Kind of-the title keeps changing."
Whatever it's called, LaFountain's photography captures the familiar from an unusual perspective. She is less concerned with blatant abstraction as she is with offering a new way to perceive reality and people's reactions to the world in which they find themselves immersed. "I like taking a lot of pictures of people who are protesting instead of actually going out in the world and taking pictures of the things that people are talking about; I'd rather capture what people are
feeling
about it," she says.
Her Santa Fe identity is something that sets her apart from the New England crowd. "Everybody at school makes fun of me. I'm the one from Santa Fe who takes pictures of cowboys and rodeos. At school, everybody else is taking pictures of snow. I'm very much from the West," she says.
Actually, she's from a little bit of everywhere. The turtle tattoo on LaFountain's back is an homage to her tribe, the Turtle Mountain Chippewa, whose reservation is in North Dakota. Her mother is Jewish, and as Eve makes plans to travel and explore the roots of her ethnic heritage, she is hoping to make her final project at college a photography book comparing life on a kibbutz and life on the rez.
As LaFountain hatches plans and ponders the possibilities of film and new ways to address activism by way of the arts, she is bringing her world with her.
"I want to go to New York," LaFountain says. "Santa Fe is still the place for Native American artists in general, but I think it needs to be stretched outside of this little community. As wonderful as it is, I would rather see it as a world-known thing than to just see it in Santa Fe."
