Gilpin, Laura

▪ American photographer

born April 22, 1891, Colorado Springs, Colo., U.S.

died Nov. 30, 1979, Santa Fe, N.M.

      American photographer noted for her images of the landscape and native people of the American Southwest.

      Gilpin studied at the Clarence H. White School of Photography in New York City from 1916 to 1918, practicing as a pictorialist (i.e., in conscious imitation of painterly qualities) and concentrating toward the end of her schooling on the technique of photogravure. She taught photography in Denver, Colo., from 1926 to 1930, worked as a staff photographer for the Central City Theatre in Denver (1932–36), and was the chief photographer for Boeing Airlines in Wichita, Kan. (1942–45). From 1946 to 1968 she photographed Navaho Indians, documenting their way of life in her eloquent platinum (and sometimes silver) prints. This work culminated in the publication of The Enduring Navaho (1968). Gilpin's next project, which engaged her from 1968 to the end of her life, took her to New Mexico, where she photographed Pueblo Indians and the Canyon de Chelly region, near Santa Fe. Among her books of photographs are The Pueblos (1941), Temples in Yucatan (1948), and The Rio Grande (1949).

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