Lisa Law
Photographer Lisa Law’s temporary Museum of the Sixties on the Plaza has been entertaining visitors most of the summer with personal tours and will remain open for just two more weeks. (76 E San Francisco St., above Overland Sheepskin Co., 10 am-5 pm, Thursday to Monday. Suggested donation: $10; children under 12 free.) Law, a Santa Fe resident, has worked in the documentary genre for more than four decades and her photos have hung in places the likes of the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Your chances to catch her iconic photos is waning, but before she packs it in again, SFR caught her for a few questions. A closing party is planned for Sept. 30 from 5 to 7 pm.
How did you land on doing a popup museum and how has it gone?
I had done a show at El Museo Cultural five years ago called Flashing on the 60s: A Trip Back to the Garden and it was supposed to be up for three months but they kept it for eight months. It was very popular—8,000 people came to it and the history museum was interviewing me for the Voices of the Counterculture show to get some vocals for the show, you know, you push a button and you hear a recording.
I said, “Don’t you want any of these pictures here?” and she ID’d 147 that became one-third of the gorgeous show that the state paid for...I brought Wavy Gravy out and I showed my movie and brought the hippie bus and parked it out front. It was really a lot of fun and then I packed it up and put it away. We then had a show and a party at my daughter’s gallery on Canyon Road, Edition One, and Peter Komis, the owner of this building, came to the show...and he loved it and I said “Why don’t we do this at your space that’s empty over the Overland Sheep Co.?” He said, “I’ll sponsor you”...So my daughter, Pilar, and I signed a contract with him and she and I then spent the next three weeks to clean it and put up the whole show and it’s been up since July 9. An unbelievable amount of people have been here, especially tourists.
What is it about the 60s that is so captivating to people?
This was during the psychedelic era, the war marches, the music—Dylan, Janis and Otis, and Woodstock. I’ve got a whole section on Woodstock. We fed, the Hog Farm from here, fed 200,000 people at Woodstock. The art was great. Easy Rider was done in that time. I have a whole section on Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper and on Tony Price, the Atomic Artist.
It’s a very exciting time and people miss it and when they come up here and they see it all together, they get goosebumps and they start crying and they want a picture with me. It’s wonderful to be here five hours a week, eight hours a day when people come in.
Do you have a favorite piece in the show?
My picture of Bob Dylan is probably the most well known picture of Bob Dylan now, it was taken in 1966 at the solarium in LA at the castle. It’s being touted as the best picture of Bob Dylan. And also my picture of Janis Joplin in Truchas. That one is well known.
