New Mexico has been a destination for photographers since the advent of the photographic process.  The peoples, landscape, and architecture of New Mexico have been primary source material for countless photographs through the “professional” and “non-professional” lens alike.  With the growing middle class of the industrialized world, the ability to purchase a camera and take a photograph became a common aspect of many peoples’ lives. The formal portrait, a snap shot of a family member’s birthday, or the photograph of an historic event have all touched our lives in significant of ways.

Between Heaven and Earth features 21 photographers from the Roswell Museum and Art Center’s archival and photography collections, celebrating not only the visual record of the photographers and their work but also the development of photography as a historic record and the meteoric rise of photography as an art form in the 20th century.

The earliest image in the exhibition is Pueblo of Zuni, New Mexico by Timothy H. O’ Sullivan. O’Sullivan was an expeditionary photographer that traveled in 1873 through the southwestern United States and Territories with the U.S. Engineer Corps’ Geological & Geographical Surveys & Expeditions, west of the 100th Meridian. The exhibition includes photographs by Edward Sheriff Curtis, Charles Lindberg, Paul Strand, Laura Gilpin, Willard Midgette, Ted Kuykendall, and Ann Bromberg.