Navajo Nation 1950: Traditional Life in Photographs

by Jonathan Wittenberg

Overview

Navajo Nation 1950 is the journey of a time gone by. Author Jonathan B. Wittenberg has compiled his photographs and notes, savoring the days when he was able to incorporate himself into the fabric of the everyday life of one of America's most important cultures. Wittenberg, then a student of biochemistry, lived among the Navajo, who accepted him into their lives and allowed him to participate in their traditional activities. With a bulky twin-lens reflex camera, the young student took extraordinary portraits of people from a time that is essentially unrecorded. With more than ninety duotone photographs, this book not only features portraits of individuals who came to mean so much to the author, but also daily activities, the incredible landscape, and events hidden from the public eye.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780977753192
Publisher:	G Arts LLC
Publication date:	07/01/2006
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	10.75(w) x 11.50(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Jonathan B. Wittenberg is a Professor Emeritus of Physiology and Biophysics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College and his PhD from Columbia University. His photographs from the era in which he lived with the Navajo people can be found in the permanent collection of the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona, and the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. He and his wife live in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

Wittenberg fell in love with the high desert, and decided to go back, taking his bulky, twin-lens reflex camera with him. The result of his travels is collected in Navajo Nation 1950: Traditional Life in Photographs (Glitterati Incorporated). Wittenberg’s photographs include stark desert landscapes on the reservation, juxtaposed with regal portraits of weavers, dancers, and medicine men.

Crave Online, August 14, 2015 - Miss Rosen

Between 1950-1953 Jonathan Wittenberg travelled throughout the Dinétah region of the Native American Navajo tribe, a region that encompasses the intersection of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah. With his twin-lens reflex camera, Wittenberg captured the Navajos, and was the only non-native to be able to access them between the years of 1950-1953 – a feat he achieved by gifting the tribe with quartz crystals, abalone shells, and two bags of oranges, on his first visit. The photos he brought back are a rare insight into the Navajos, examining their culture and traditional practices.

2/20/15 Jocks & Nerds Magazine

This is a book that captures and preserves the traditional life and culture of the Navajo Indians. Between 1950 and 1953, the author traveled throughout the Arizona-New Mexico region known as the Navajo Reservation. The land is harsh and yet stunningly beautiful. The people, as seen through the lens of his camera, hold the beauty and the hardship of the land in their faces. It is unusual and very rare even today that an outsider is allowed to view many of their traditional rituals. They are a private people.

Apogee Photo Magazine - Noella Ballenger

The photographs presented in Navajo Nation 1950 celebrate the drama and splendor of the traditional Navajo people and of the dramatic desert on which they endure.

PMc Magazine, Spring 2015 - Jonathan B. Wittenberg