BIG EYES - The Southwestern Photographs of Simeon Schwemberger, 1902-1908 [SOLD]

BIG EYES - The Southwestern Photographs of Simeon Schwemberger, 1902-1908

by Paul V. Long

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque

Hardback with slipcover, first edition, 1992

From the cover flap

"Simeon Schwemberger worked as a lay brother at the Franciscan Mission of St. Michaels near Windowrock, Arizona, from 1901 to 1908. Around 1902 he acquired his first camera, and over the next six years took approximately 400 photographs of the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, and Pueblo Indians living in northern Arizona and northwest New Mexico. During this time he also acquired his nickname: ‘Anaa;tsoh, meaning ‘Big Eyes' in Navajo. In these photographs, Schwemberger displays candor towards his subjects and reveals important information about Native American lifeways and rituals at the turn of the century.

"Western Europeans had been recording the Indians of North America in graphic and painted images since the eighteenth century, and this tradition was both continued and further popularized by photography. At least nineteen photographers worked in the Southwest between 1895 and 1910. Though Schwemberger's photographs are little known, and although he was an amateur without formal training, his photographs show as much sensitivity toward his subjects, identities and customs as the works of more sophisticated photographers like J. K. Hillers, Charles Lummis, and A. C. Vroman. Schwemberger's extended series of photographs of the Nightway ceremony, along with his written description of it, are a genuine contribution to the documentation of this period."