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Exhibition Not an Ostrich: & Other Images from America's Library

Not an Ostrich: & Other Images from America's Library

LAURA GILPIN. Mrs. Francis Nakai. New Mexico, 1932

Laura Gilpin. Mrs. Francis Nakai (Navajo), New Mexico, 1932. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (53.00.00)

LAURA GILPIN. Mrs. Francis Nakai. New Mexico, 1932

One of the foremost American photographers of the Southwest, Laura Gilpin studied with Clarence White in New York in 1918. She returned to her native Colorado Springs to begin her professional photography career, making soft-focus landscapes, portraits, and still lifes. Gilpin gradually adopted a more hard-edged style to document the southwestern landscape and members of Pueblo and Navajo tribes. Her images depict Native Americans with simplicity and grace, living in an intimate relationship with the land.