Tony Roma’s, Hatch, NM (SVNM/Small Village New Mexico Project),
March 2022 by Bruce Berman
Text and photography by Bruce Berman
The SVNM Project is a group documentary project done by the students (and professor) of the photojournalism program in the Journalism and Media Studies Department at the New Mexico State University (NMSU). The project is an ongoing project done over the past ten years.
It is a document of the Rio Grande river valley of southern New Mexico.
Originally the project was started as a way to go out into the “field” and put classroom photography into actual use.
As time has gone by the project has gained relevance as the population of the region has exploded and small villages are increasingly less small and less culturally homogeneous. Urbanization is slowly but surly removing the character of the valley.
The student SVNM project is an attempt to leave a record of what the rural Mesilla Valley was.
