Dwellers at the source;: Southwestern Indian photographs of A. C. Vroman, 1895-1904,

Vroman spent the better part of eight summers photographing among the Indians of the Southwest. He published his photographs in the leading journals of the day, meticulously arrangiing his images in albums and sets as keepsakes for a small cadre of friends and associates. Vroman's sure-handed and sensitive approach to the people, sites, surroundings, and religious ceremonies of the Southwest infuse his photographs with a power uncharacteristic of the age. and lives of Native Americans utterly intriguing. "My first thought," he wrote after witnessing the Snake Dance, "was to see it again and know more about it, why it was, and how it is planned. I felt I could spend a year right there, be one of them and learn their ways and beliefs."Vroman went on to take hundreds of pictures of the sacred snake and flute dances at the Hopi villages. His experiences led him to dismiss prevailing racial and ethnic stereotypes, and his frequent travels enabled him to develop a rapport with the people. "Have no fear of the Indian, "It is the bad white man that you should be watchful of in this country. " He found the "strong faces" of the Indians ideal subjects for the camera. He brought an incisive eye and intuitive sense of fairness to his Native American work. His photography is betwixt and between-not purely art, not purely science-rather a combination of the two. This aesthetic ambiguity is what set Vroman apart from his peers then and what keeps the imagery alive now. Vroman wanted his pictures to tell a story, and they tell an eloquent tale. Most of his images are, today, often viewed as single works, unmoored from the circumstances of their creation. Yet, like the very best photographs of any genre or gen- eration, they hold our attention above and beyond their original context. They are simply beautiful objects in and of themselves.