In the beginning . . .

The light in these images was first discovered many years ago out on a vast plain just south of Santa Fe. My friend Anthony, an Omaha Native American, walked out into the tall grass in his most beautiful regalia. The sun was low on the horizon and the light was turning everything a beautiful shade of pale luminous orange. Just when I was about to release the shutter, my friend Sadie’s hybrid wolf wandered into the scene and joined the moment. As Chief Dan George aptly observes in the film Little Big Man, “Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t.” This time the magic worked.

The faces of the Native American people I photograph reveal to me a profound sense of the sacred. These people are descendants of those I first encountered in images by photographer Edward Curtis that I admired in a photo history class long ago. I remember being deeply moved by what I saw projected on the screen that day. Curtis’s photographs reveal something awesome (in its truest sense)—something that is majestic and universally human and beyond words. I believe there is a flow of energy in the great photographer’s images that brings them into the present and in turn makes them timeless. It is that sense of awe and even dignity I want to bring to light in the photographs I make and present here.

I have heard some Native Americans speak about something they call the Great Mystery. One of my favorite writers, Chief Luther Standing Bear, explains, “From Wakan Tanka there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things—the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals—and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man. Thus all things were kindred and brought together by the same Great Mystery.” (Land of the Spotted Eagle, 1933) I hope these pictures offer a gift from that Great Mystery that Standing Bear speaks about. I believe the light that illuminates the people in front of my lens comes from that powerful place. 

I photographed Marquel and her daughter Kai days after their pueblo’s corn dance. What I witnessed that cool autumn day on the plaza at Nambé was as magical and transformative as communion in a Catholic church. I learned from Marquel that while the dancers and the drummers who participate in the dance work to be fully mindful and aware, everyone who attends the dance is also asked to be present in the moment, to be aware, as Standing Bear suggested, that all things are kindred and brought together by the Great Mystery. How we are being asked to attend in these moments remains a mystery to me as there is no formal request. Yet it happens. One has to be open to the possibility. One has to be open to the moment.

And so I ask the viewer to fully attend while looking at this portfolio of photographs, to be completely present as one might at a Feast Day dance. Marquel said that when Native people dance they “walk in beauty”—everyone works together to create that beauty. The artist can only create the work and beat the drum to call the viewer to it. The viewer has to attend for the beauty to be shared. You are invited to attend.

Craig Varjabedian
Santa Fe, New Mexico