Earth River Sky

Georgia O’Keeffe once described her artistic muse New Mexico as “more sky than earth.” As photographer Rob Atkins discovered over two decades, beneath that cerulean stretch of ether, the golden sun spills across the sumptuous adobe architecture and the sounds of the Rio Grande reverberate throughout the multifaceted geography of northern New Mexico.

Following in the footsteps of visionary artists—including Agnes Martin and Ernest Blumenschein—Atkins has documented the soul of the region from the Church of San Geronimo in Taos Pueblo to Camel Rock in Tesuque. As a travelogue of Atkins’s artistic and spiritual pilgrimage in photographs, Earth River Sky encapsulates the fundamental elements of fire, earth, water, and air that converge to form the sublime architecture and landscape found only in northern New Mexico. In Earth River Sky, Atkins takes readers through every corner of the mesas, across the serpentine arcs of the Rio Grande, and between the shadows of the vigas, or roof beams, reaching across the earthen walls of Santa Fe, illuminating the profound beauty of New Mexico in the Southwestern United States.