Navajo Nation 1950: Traditional Life in Photographs

More than fifty years ago, a young student of biochemistry and physics took his bulky, twin-lens reflex camera on a journey through the Dinetah, the land of the Navajo people. He entered with gifts - quartz crystals, abalone shells, and two bags of oranges - and he left with an invaluable photographic record of a culture. With a historical perspective provided in a Foreword by Navajo Nation Museum Director Geoffrey I. Brown and an exhaustive introduction by the author/photographer himself, Navajo Nation 1950 is as informative as it is visually stunning. The scenes and events described in the photographer"s essay are more than just stories; in fact, they are more important now than ever, in that Wittenberg is the only non-native photographer who had access to the Navajo Nation people and lands during the years 1950-1952. Today, access has been limited even further by The People, so some of the landscapes seen here can only be seen through Wittenberg"s lens. Now that half a century has...