Gallery Photographer Gabriela E. Campos Photographs Centennial Burning of Zozobra
August 31, 2024 | Source: Monroe Gallery of Photography
August 31, 2024
Gallery Photographer Gabriela E. Campos covered the 100th burning of Zozobra and the Santa Fe New Mexican featured her fantastic photograph full-page on the front cover of today's print edition: Zozobra burns in massive, joyous inferno for centennial.
Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
The Burning of Zozobra is a unique cultural event in Santa Fe staged annually by the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe in Zozobra Field at Fort Marcy Park on the Friday of Labor Day weekend as an exciting and fiery finale to the last days of summer.
Artist William Howard “Will” Shuster, Jr. created the first Zozobra in 1924 as the signature highlight of a private party for Los Cinco Pintores, a group of artists and writers who made their way to New Mexico in the 1920s.
Zozobra in Spanish means “anguish, anxiety, or gloom”, by burning it, people destroy the worries and troubles of the previous year in the flames.
Made of wood, wire, and cotton cloth and stuffed with bushels of shredded paper, which traditionally includes obsolete police reports, paid-off mortgages, and even divorce papers, Zozobra is a dark and eerie character, part ghost and part monster