Navajo and Photography: A Critical History of the Representation of an American People

Historically photographs say less about the Navajo than about photographers of Navajos. In Navajo and Photography James Faris calls attention to the inability of photographs of Navajo by non-Navajo to communicate either the lived experiences of native people or their history.

Beginning with the earliest photographs of Navajos in captivity at Bosque Redondo and including the most recent glossy picture books and calendars, Faris’s survey points out assumptions that have always governed photographic representation of the Navajo people.

Full of the work of photographers such as Edward S. Curtis and Laura Gilpin, as well as photographs by many less-well known figures, readers will find Navajo and Photography an enlightening juxtaposition of cultures.