Capturing a community: Santa Fe-based photographer's ballooning project features everything but the balloons

Bryce Risley knows it takes patience to capture a moment.

The Santa Fe-based photographer’s work is at the center of “Bryce Risley: Focusing Beyond Balloons,” which is on display at the Anderson Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum.

Lynne Newton, exhibits curator at the Balloon Museum, said the exhibit features 30 photos that sample Risley’s work from a multiyear project.

“Bryce is a balloonist and, among other things, a photographer,” Newton says. “He’s working on a book about the Albuquerque ballooning community and through the process of collecting the information, he’s photographing people within the ballooning community.”

The Balloon Museum partnered with Risley in putting the exhibit together.

Risley is also an ethnographer, somebody who studies and describes the culture of a particular society or group.

He taught himself photography while doing research on coral reef fisheries in Sri Lanka in 2018.

“My photographic work is diverse in theme and subject, shifting focus with each project I undertake,” Risley says.

Risley says much of his photography features the locations where he’s undertaken research or places he’s called home.

“Growing up in the cities of Santa Fe and Albuquerque, I attribute much of my success as an artist to being New Mexican,” Risley says. “My time in New Mexico has influenced the way I engage with people and place. My work is inspired and informed by tradition, industry, institutions, and relationships between individuals, families, communities, and their environments.”

Risley began the project with the Albuquerque ballooning community and met with the curatorial team at the Balloon Museum: Nan Masland, Rebecca Prinster, Newton and Eric Wimmer.

After showing the team examples of his work, the team expressed excitement about the value of it and how it ties in with the museum’s mission.

“The team and I had a lot to offer one another with our mutual goals and creative ideas involving ballooning,” Risley says.

“This was a major opportunity to promote the project in a space dedicated to celebrating and preserving ballooning! … I explained my approach to conceptualizing photography for the project to the team. I also shared several principles I adhere to when I take photographs. The most important is try not to photograph balloons. The Albuquerque balloonist is a people project. If a balloon photobombs one of my images it’s probably incidental.”

Risley presented Newton and staff with over 80 photos.

After the team reviewed the photography, Prinster devised five themes — “Intergenerational Connections,” “The Trappings of Ballooning,” “Illuminating the Imagination,” “Looking Closer, Seeing Differently” and “Out in the Community.”

Newton says this particular project was about six to eight months long.

“The photos capture how ballooning is pervasive in the community and highlights the culture,” he says.