Enduring Navajo

Laura Gilpin–a contemporary of Mary Austin, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Willa Cather–was unique among women chroniclers of the region because she worked in photography. She perceived the Southwest as an environment for human activity rather than as a place of untouched beauty, and her empathy for her subjects is evident in her work. Even in her eighties–ignoring the physical infirmities of age–she would camp overnight to be near a place she wanted to photograph at the break of day. The vast empty stretches of the southwestern desert did not deter her. She thought nothing of driving several hundred miles to make an image of a Navaho ceremony or of taking a long flight in a small plane to see a particular mountain peak.

Softcover
321 pages