Mission San Xavier del Bac

Author's Comments

The mission is white in a way that almost nothing else in the desert is white. Not the bone white of bleached cattle skull, not the dust white of a dry wash. Something closer to fresh paper, and against the particular blue of a Tucson sky in February, it does something to a camera that I have never quite gotten used to. I shoot San Xavier in the first hour after sunrise. The east facade takes the light directly then, and the carved stone around the entrance comes alive in a way it does not at any other time of day. The shadows are long and the stucco is still cool to the touch. By ten the light has gone flat and the contrast has collapsed, and the photograph you wanted at seven is no longer available. Wide is the obvious approach and I make that frame every time, usually from the small rise to the southwest where the two towers and the dome stack into the composition the way the architects clearly intended. But the photograph I keep working toward is tighter. A detail of the carved saints around the entrance, side-lit, with the white wall falling off into shadow behind. Or the bell tower against nothing but sky, cropped so close that the building becomes pattern. Go inside. Sit for a while before you think about your camera. This is an active parish and the Tohono O'odham community worships here, and the building asks something of you that the exterior does not. Whether you make a photograph inside or not is almost beside the point. The mission gives more to people who arrive slowly.

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