Willie Cly overlooking Monument Valley. (Detail)
The Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American-government territory covering over 27,000 square miles in the American southwest, the largest land area retained by a tribe in the United States. The tribe deals directly with the United States Congress as a sovereign nation within U.S. borders. Established in 1868 by treaty, the Navajo Nation numbers over 300,000 deep, with 110 chapters in its organization.
The Rolling Mule, standing rocks.
Within the Nation is the Dinétah, the traditional homeland of the Navajo, situated in the area between the four sacred mountains of the people, an area visited by photographer Jonathan B. Wittenberg in 1950. A graduate student at Columbia University, Wittenberg had been spending the summer at the Hopkins Marine Station in California studying microbiology, and on the advice of a colleague, drove to Navajo lands and visited the ruins of the Anazazi pueblo Betatakin.
“My hellbenders.”
As Wittenberg writes in the introduction to the book, “Photography for me was a refuge from the intense loneliness of living among people with whom I did not share a language. My Navajo hosts were happy to join forces with me to record and teach their disappearing traditional ways to the Belagaana (American). All photographs were posed, often after a delay for people to put on their best clothes and finest turquoise and silver. The act of taking a photograph was seen as taking value away from a person. Compensation is obligatory, but was often waived. All photographs of ceremonies were taken with the explicit permission of the presiding medicine man. If he felt that something was not to be shared, I did not attend and take pictures….”
Weaving a rug depicting corn, the tree of life.
“I, a Brooklyn-born city-boy, I was curiously at ease among The People. The grandson of immigrants, growing up with the sons of immigrants, I was no stranger to social upheaval. The Navajo penchant for the ludicrous fit nicely with the distorted logic of the Yiddish jokes I grew up with. I could swap jokes, and I enjoyed the constant ripple of laughter breaking through gravity with an unexpected phrase, or a bit of mime, mocking the absurd. Above all, it was the overwhelming, welcoming hospitality of the people that made me at home.”
We are fortunate for Wittenberg’s efforts to document the Navajo Nation at a pivotal point in their history, and share his memories of their way of life in a eloquently told text that gives a voice to his beautifully composed portraits of the people and the land.
All images from Navajo Nation 1950: Traditional Life by Jonathan B. Wittenberg, © 2006, published by Glitterati Incorporated.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in-and-out-of-print loves.
