It’s a real life adventure story of the American West with a most unlikely character taking center stage. In 1853 Solomon Carvalho, an observant Sephardic Jew who had never saddled his own horse, accompanied the famed explorer John Fremont on Fremont’s Fifth Westward Expedition and became one of the first photographers to document the far West.
The new documentary, CARVALHO’S JOURNEY, is the story of Carvalho’s harrowing adventure, one that took him from New York to California, passing through New Mexico on the way. Carvalho’s daguerreotypes captured the sweeping vistas of the rough and tumble West, and his best-selling memoir of 1867 left a vivid record of the journey itself. The Santa Fe Jewish Film Festival is presenting the regional premier of CARVALHO’S JOURNEY at 3:00 PM on Sunday, November 20th at CCA. Santa Fe resident Robert Shlaer, who retraced parts of that journey and recreated many of Carvalho’s daguerreotypes, will be at the screening to share his insights about this piece of history.