Marfa

photography by RITA ACKERMANN text by JEFF RIAN Marfa, West Texas, ZIP code 79843 Marfa is a small town of just over 2,000 people located in the desert not far, on the Texas scale, from the Mexican border. Founded as a railroad water stop in the 1880s, it’s now the seat of Presidio County. The town is named after Marfa Strogoff, a character in Jules Verne’s novel, Michael Strogoff: The Courier of the Czar. Marfa is your typical Western town, but in recent years it has become an art destination. There’s the natural shimmering “Marfa Lights,” which on clear nights are visible in the Paisano Pass, leading southwest toward the Chinati Mountains, for one thing. But it’s Marfa’s connection to late-modern American art that attracts most visitors. Fort D.A. Russell, an airfield, was established close to town during WWII, but it was later closed down. In 1971 the Minimalist artist…