Overview
Lee Marmon, known as "the blue-eyed Indian," is America's most renowned Native American photographer, and this is the first book to showcase his breathtaking work. At the age of ten, living on the Laguna Pueblo lands of New Mexico, Lee entered the ranks of professional photographers when he earned two dollars for photographing a truck wreck for a local insurance company. The photo shoot had been his father's idea; he handed his son a camera and said, "Go to it."Being given the camera and earning money for his photographs was prophetic for Lee, but at the time he never expected that this early experience would be the catalyst for a career that has spanned decades.
While serving in the army in Alaska, a landscape so utterly different from the New Mexico desert, Marmon made a promise to himself. He decided he would get a camera if it was the last thing he did, and he would use his talent to record his world and his people. When he returned home after the war, he bought his first Speed Graphic camera and photographed everything.
This book comprises the jewels of Lee Marmon's award-winning life's work, celebrating the Laguna Pueblo people and their distinctive landscapes, traditions, and history. The images are paired with equally evocative prose and poetry by three of our most celebrated Native American writers: Marmon's daughter, novelist Leslie Marmon Silko, and poets Joy Harjo and Simon Ortiz. With each flash of his camera, Lee Marmon captured a piece of Native American history; this book preserves that precious legacy.