The enduring Navaho
Laura Gilpin Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. xiii, [3], 263, [1] pages. Map. Appendices (Chronology and Navaho Pronunciation Guide) Bibliography. Index. DJ has some wear and soiling, with small tears noted. Signed by the photographer on the half-title page. Program for a Retrospective Exhibition laid in. Laura Gilpin (April 22, 1891 – November 30, 1979) was an American photographer. Gilpin is known for her photographs of Native Americans, particularly the Navajo and Pueblo, and Southwestern landscapes. Gilpin formally studied photography in New York from 1916 to 1917 before returning to Colorado to begin her career as a professional photographer. Gilpin made her earliest dated autochrome in 1908 when she was 17. This photography technique had only become widely available that year, which is evidence of Gilpin's early dedication to photography. In 1915, she traveled to the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco expositions as a companion for a friend of her mother's. At these expositions, Gilpin developed an interest in sculpture and native cultures. While Gilpin did submit still lifes and portraits to exhibitions and competitions, the larger part of Gilpin's success stemmed from the popularity of her western landscape photographs. Her interest in the western landscape originated with her upbringing in Colorado Springs, but was expanded when she stopped in Santa Fe on the way to Mexico with her father and visited the Museum of New Mexico. Over a thirty-year period from 1945-1975 her work was seen in more than one hundred one-person and group exhibits. The Enduring Navaho received the national Cowboy Hall of Fame's Western Heritage Award as outstanding Western non-fiction book for 1968. "This is a book of superb photographs. Its portraits of individuals and family groups convey a quality of intimacy and serenity; its landscapes spread out the dramatic setting of desert, mountain, and canyon in which these people live; and its scenes of daily activity show many of the details of the way their life has been lived. Among the pictorial records of Navajo country and life, Miss Gilpin's volume deserves a special place. --American Anthropologist "This is not a brand new book, nor a best-seller here today and gone tomorrow. It is record of the Navajo people and their country, a book to keep and to refer to over and over again, always with deep pleasure. Do friends ask you about the Navajos? Send them this book, for it is the heart of the tribe. --The Navajo Times "This book can't be summarized successfully. It needs to be seen and read, and then savoured again and again for a joyous adventure in beauty and spirit. --Santa Fe New Mexican ." . . a touching tribute to The People, to their endurance and their adaptability, to their vanishing way of life and to the new one opening ahead of them. --Sacramento Bee A contemporary of Mary Austin, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Willa Cather, Laura Gilpin was unique among women chroniclers of the Southwest because she worked in photography. She perceived the region as an environment for human activity rather than a place for 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 one image of a Navajo ceremony or making a long flight in a small plane to see a particular mountain peak. Gilpin's sixty-year career established her as one of the outstanding photographers of the twentieth century. Here are her pictures of the Navaho people and the stories of their lives in the 1950s and 1960s. Condition: Very good / Good.
Keywords: Pictorial Works, Photography, Navaho, Creation Story, Dineh, Habitation, Crafts, Tribal Government, Heritage, Weavers, Silversmiths, Potters, Basketmakers, Painters, Sacred Mountains
[Book #81825]
Price: $200.00