‘Frames of Feeling,’ Connection, and Absence in a New Landscape

Today’s Substack post continues the theme of  framing in understanding places:

Last week, I wrote about the power of literally “framing” provocative landscapes and recalled how we often select and focus on specific scenes to make sense of the larger world. It is a rediscovery of the obvious, as noted almost 10 years ago in Seeing the Better City: What and how we see defines the context of our lives.

Over 10 years in many places, I’ve learned more about how we see. We see external realities, which we consider universal views, until we realize subjectivity’s role.

Instead, I’ve turned “framing” into a routine as the summer portends my second year in New Mexico. Daily, I compose at least one “frame of feeling” photograph in response to particular places.

This form of photography is meditative rather than impulsive and helps us understand longstanding landscapes objectively, based on stated facts, and subjective response. It is a regular practice that many could enjoy, whether at home, work, or school, but it requires more diligence than social media is built for.

Immersing yourself in local ambience and tradition is also a way to maintain the “newbie humility” I wrote about last year: Ask questions while listening rather than prescribing with closed eyes.

Place immersion and understanding have their for-profit sides. My friends in the design professions do similar vision exercises for clients throughout site planning or building design. Other professionals audit and perform due diligence or QA/QC.

But I doubt my purpose is to become a “frames of feeling” consultant—more of a volunteer guide.

Two “frames of feeling” emerged earlier this week, and each offered perspective on the business of transition—navigating still new places and the delicate interplay between forging new connections and confronting the absence of familiar standbys.

Below, I recount two framed scenes that are modest and straightforward.

These are quiet, almost incidental moments that, when juxtaposed, begin to tell a story. They vary from my old urban diaries and Instagram-ish European streets, but both examine layers of a place through what each framed scene presents and what each scene seems to withhold.

Frame 1: El Camino Real: Bounding Potential and Solitude

The first frame is straightforward, with a solitary brown sign contrasting with a gray New Mexico sky. “El Camino Real,” it says, pointing towards a USFS Trailhead at the beginning of a short hike toward the hills southwest of Santa Fe, not far from toney Las Campanas.

Although not in the photo, a New Yorker blocked the road in an old Chevrolet with a trailer. He was buried in his phone screen, looking for an alternative campsite after internalizing the “day use only” sign up the road.

Despite the would-be camper’s dilemma and roadblock, the scene communicated immense potential, an invitation to explore an objectively viewable trail with a storied history. Despite its untouched aura, this framed place felt contextually significant based on the long-term alteration of its surroundings over time.

This particular trail, El Camino Real de Terra Adentro, The Royal Road of the Interior Land, began as indigenous footpaths, altered by centuries of “conflict, commerce, and cultural exchange”—or, from another perspective, colonization and conquest.

This simple sign memorializes where thousands walked before. In a broader sense, it hints at the introspection or way-finding common to European Camino journeys, or canal walks in England (but I found those experiences more functional, oddly enough).

This bounded portrait is a window back to—and a connection between—New Spain and Mexico City, 1600 miles away.

So, the would-be camper and I joined settlers, missionaries, soldiers, and traders who had already changed the land.

Muted light towards dusk in a high desert landscape beyond also framed solitude. Which path to take? Should I help the New Yorker? Do I explore more before dark, or head home?

The signage depicts one historic path, but the scene may be more about the potential paths that emerge from layering history and personal experience while immersing oneself anywhere.

Frame 2: The Missing Mailboxes: A Place of Absence or Hope?

Some miles away at the edge of the Galisteo Basin, across NM 41 from my friend’s gallery, I found a second, contrasting “frame of feeling” beneath different clouds.

Tilting fence posts helped frame a sky of darker gray. Adjacent, a line of skeletal mailbox supports, either authentic or assembled art, fronted the highway. Only one weathered metal box remained as a repository for the outside world.

The mailbox suggested that just one point of potential communication survives amid artifacts, suggesting a landscape of absence rather than the possible.

If an El Camino Real frame of feeling suggests a factual trail of sequential explorations and near-constant waves of change, the empty posts imagine severed or abandoned connections. “Ghost mailboxes” imply a loss of community and communication.

For me, this frame emphasized the layers left behind and recalled the challenges of moving to a new place and the absence that is part of transition.

Yet, the lone mailbox, still standing, offered a counterpoint and a hope for future connection.

Suddenly, rather than being a casual historian at a Camino trailhead, I became a self-styled explorer of memory, absence, and displacement themes, providing a subjective voice to overlooked stories.

Framing the In-Between: Weaving a Narrative of Place

These two frames of feeling, featuring the Royal Road and the Mailbox Ghosts, help sort out a newcomer’s complex emotions—the pull towards change while wrestling with personal memories, “this reminds me of” moments, and oft-cited documentation of the places themselves.

Since last summer, here in New Mexico, I have stressed how many nearby places carry “historical weight” and have a palpable sense and spirit. Their layers remain ripe for exploration. My “newbie humility” may be hypervigilant about symbolic, sometimes contradictory details and visual cues that tell a story.

Here, the El Camino Real sign frames an outward journey, spurred by viewing the physical and historical terrain. The Ghost Mailboxes frame the inward journey, exploring connection and the inevitable confrontation with what’s absent or lost.

Frames of feeling—and wooden or metal frames that become windows to associated imagery—are my building blocks of a larger narrative. I’m simultaneously exploring the objective view and subjective, internal landscapes and questioning which one is just along for the ride.