1891-1979

Laura Gilpin lived close to the land on her family’s ranch in the Rockies until she went to study at the Clarence H. White School of Photography in New York.  She shed the soft-focus imagery derived from her pictorial training and took a hard-edged approach to photographing the Southwest landscape and the Pueblo Indians and the ruins of their Anasazi ancestors.  Ultimately, it was the Navaho people to whom she devoted her career.  The Enduring Navaho, published in 1968, was regarded by the Navajo themselves as a truthful and compassionate record of their lives and secured Gilpin her place in anthropological and photographic history.