Adam Clark Vroman begun with photography in 1892, becoming popular for his pictures to the Native Americans who were, back then , living in California and in the states nearby such as Arizona and New Mexico. He started his career in the American railways but later on focused almost entirely on culture and photography. His bookstore, the “Vroman Bookstore” became one of the biggest companies of book distribution in California, fact which connected him with some of the biggest writers of that time.
Amongst his works there are also pictures illustrating the best seller “Ramona” by Helen Hunt Jackson, which changed once and forever the perception of the world about California. Vroman’s picture were natural, evocative and they were showing the intimate relationship that he was able to recreate with his subjects, certainly not inclined to allow pictures to a white man from Los Angeles.
The pictures were taken to the tribes of Hopi and Navajo, during the final period of the Indian wars where the North America invaders of English, Dutch, French, German and Spanish origin, as well as others, slaughtered the natives seizing their lands.
The photographic documentation is fundamental because it precedes by a few years another great American photographer, Edward Curtis, who in 1906 left for a trip lasting almost 30 years during which he captures habits and customs of the these populations. The very first pictures of the Hopi and Navajo were dating back to 1886, 4 years before the massacre of Wounded Knee, which ended the the rebellions of the Native Americans.
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