The Project:
In 2020 I was asked by the University of New Mexico to photograph its Physics and Astronomy building, designed in the early 1950s by esteemed architect John Gaw Meem.
The building was slated for demolition, to make room for UNM Hospital’s new Emergency and Trauma Care Center.
After completing the large format black and white photographic documentation required by the Library of Congress and the Historic American Buildings Survey, my job was done. But I still had a key to the vacant building, and realized that architecture was only part of why the place had value.
In its dozens of intact classrooms and labs, a written record (scrawled, mysterious) covered what seemed like acres of blackboards, greenboards, whiteboards. To me the scribbled language may as well have been Pheonician; but I knew that these symbols and glyphs had been important–at least during the few hours that young aspiring scientists and their professors puzzled over them.
With access for only two more days, it hit me that to lose these artifacts to the wrecking ball might be like casually tossing out Heisenberg’s notebooks or Cy Twombly’s sketchbooks. It might not matter; or it might.
Just in case–this little portfolio is a bow to the magic of ideas, especially ideas that come to us as questions and squiggles and smudges and wonderment.
–Martin Stupich
MARKING TIME
All content © 2026 Martin Stupich
For permissions, licensing and exhibition: martinstupich@mac.com www.martinstupich.com