The Pueblo Imagination: Landscape and Memory in the Photography of Lee Marmon

by Lee Marmon, with Leslie Marmon Silko, Joy Harjo, and Simon Ortiz
Beacon Press (2003), Boston, MA
159 pages
ISBN 0-8070-6614-1
Hardcover $35.00

Review by Stephanie Owen

Laguna Pueblo photographer Lee Marmon shares his joy of photography and his dedication to the craft in his first book, which is mostly black and white photographs. Marmon does an incredible job of preserving Native American heritage against the backdrop of the Southwest.

The Southwest landscape is portrayed as a place of both beauty and space by Marmon’s use of light and shadow, which serves to haunt and intensify the details of his subjects. His life’s work, as the record-keeper of his heritage, is profound and admirable, his artistry fuel for the imagination.

Additionally, three well-known and respected Native American writers, Leslie Marmon Silko (his daughter), Joy Harjo, and Simon Ortiz, offer their prose and poems. Their works are complementary and do not detract from the bare and blunt beauty of Marmon’s photographs.

Stephanie Owen is the cataloging librarian at the Institute of American Indian Arts.