Subhankar Banerjee
Near the dead piñon where birds gather in autumn
From the series Where I Live I Hope to Know
2008
Digital chromogenic print, face- and back-mounted to a petroleum product (Plexiglas)
36 x 48 inches
Courtesy of the artist
© Subhankar Banerjee

Subhankar Banerjee is best known for his landscape photographs taken far from home, in the Arctic wilderness. In a new body of work he has been using the camera to explore his own neighborhood. The pictures in his series Where I Live, I Hope to Know feature the plant and animal life within walking distance of his rental house in the planned community of Eldorado, just south of Santa Fe. Banerjee and his wife, Nora, started traversing the neighborhood on foot, approaching it with an attitude of unknowing innocence. When Nora, a native New Mexican, showed her husband the nest of a curved-bill thrasher, resting delicately in the spines of a cholla (pronounced “CHOY-yuh”), Banerjee was captivated by the juxtaposition and began to see the plants in a new way.