Photos can obscure as much as they reveal. When we encounter historic photographs, it can feel like we’ve entered the past through a portal.
But like contemporary photographs, what is left out of the frame is as interesting and puzzling as what we can observe. Still, the donation of historic photos to any archive can only help to add to our knowledge and expand the questions we need to ask. This is certainly the case for the William Thomas Mullarky photo collection at the New Mexico History Museum’s Palace of the Governors Photo Archive. The Mullarky collection has never been accessible until recently and they provide unusual and unexpected windows into 1930s Gallup, New Mexico.
For the Fall 2025 issue of El Palacio, University of New Mexico professor and labor historian, David Correia, wrote an article about the Gallup Coal Wars of 1933-35. Mullarky’s photos of the events in Gallup at the time accompany Correia’s words. For this episode of Encounter Culture, however, Correia talks about who Mullarky was and what makes his photos so out of the ordinary.
“The photos just blew me away. It’s hard to do it justice over the air. I mean, you have to see these photos. They’re really remarkable. But Mullarky was a portraitist and he somehow brought that aesthetic out of the studio so that his street scenes, and scenes of like marching soldiers, and scenes of like hired goons with guns, like rounding up miners, they all look like portraits somehow,” says Correia. “You’re like, ‘What’s happening here?’”
Discover more:
New Mexico History Museum Palace of the Governors Photo Archive
William Thomas Mullarky Photographs of the Gallup Coal War
Hear more on Encounter Culture:
A History of Genízaro Identity in the Heart of New Mexico with Dr. Gregorio Gonzales
Read more in El Palacio:
Learn more:
Edward Curtis photographs (as example of “frontier photography”)
Simeon Schwemberger photo collection at The University of New Mexico
Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial
Center for Southwest Research at The University of New Mexico
The Myth of Santa Fe, by Chris Wilson (UNM Press)
We’d love to hear from you! Let us know what you loved about the episode, share a personal story it made you think of, or ask us a question at elpalacio@dca.nm.gov. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.
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Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.
Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine
Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann
Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz
Recording Engineer: Collin Ungerleider and Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler
Associate Producer & Editor: Monica Braine (Assiniboine/Lakota)
Theme Music: D’Santi Nava
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