“The key to the creative type is that he is separated out of the common pool of shared meanings. There is something in his life experience that makes him take in the world as a problem; as a result, he has to make personal sense out of it.”
― Ernest Becker, from the Denial of Death
I was born in Utah (U.S.A.). It was named after the Ute people. The Nuuchu, or “Mountain People” occupied most of Utah and Colorado for centuries, long before the Europeans arrived on this continent.
I currently live in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It’s beautiful here. The landscape is breathtaking. It’s the closest thing to a perfect place I’ve ever been. However, it has a very sordid and sad history.
Most Americans live their day-to-day lives without ever thinking about the real history of their country. Topics like genocide, land dispossession, forced migration, and colonization are rarely discussed, if ever. Every day I go outside and I’m reminded of this land’s past and the people that lived here. For me, it’s unavoidable.
Through these photographs, I want to share both the beauty and the tragedy of this place I call home. I want to esteem the Ute people both past and present. And I hope to engage the viewer long enough to put this history and the people into their consciousness. Ken Burns said, “Being an American means reckoning with a history fraught with violence and injustice. Ignoring that reality in favor of mythology is not only wrong but also dangerous.”
RED MOTHER EARTH - WHERE THE PEOPLE OF SUN MOUNTAIN LIVED
A Whole Plate Palladiotype print from a Calotype (paper) negative.
I’ve approached this work from a place of deference, wonder, sadness, and loss. I’m torn about where I live and what I know. I often think about what happened here and question why it did. It confuses me and creates inner conflict for me; like a type of cognitive dissonance. I struggle with living on this land, and yet I’m in awe every day of how sublime and beautiful it is here.
What do I do with this terrible history? My answer is to embrace it, study it, wrestle with it and transform it into a weapon for the human spirit; one that will enlarge my sense of responsibility and strengthen my moral resolve.
This project has also served as a cathartic release for me. It’s one of the biggest reasons why the work was created. While the work is metaphorical, it acts as a catalyst in resolving my relationship with the land, its history, and the people that lived here. Telling some of their stories through my images gave me a better understanding of who I am in relation to this place and its history and people.
At dawn, Tava-Kaavi (Sun Mountain) is the first Colorado mountain to catch the sun’s rays. The mountain is over 14,000 (4.300m) feet above sea level. The Ute believes it’s where Mother Earth meets Father Sky.
Before it was America’s Mountain, “Pikes Peak” (its colonized name), it stood at the center of the Tabeguache (tab-a-watch) band of the Nuche/Ute tribe’s geography and identity. They were the “People of the Sun Mountain,” placed here by Sunif (the wolf) to grow and flourish amid the foothills of the majestic peak.
The Tabeguache tribe was the largest of the ten nomadic bands of the Ute. They followed the herds of wild animals throughout their lands, harvesting the elk, deer, and buffalo at specific places at certain times of the year. This lifestyle mandated that they move their camp every three or four weeks. They constructed a medicine wheel at the heart of each new camp, linking them to Mother Earth like an umbilical cord. The rock outcroppings were called, “the bones of Mother Earth”. And the large red rock formations were considered “grandfathers.”
WILLOW TREES - FREMONT COUNTY, COLORADO
Crack willow (salix fragilis)! Willow bark was steeped as a tea by Native Americans, and the young twigs and bark were chewed to relieve headaches. It was later found the active ingredient was salicylic acid, the basis of today's aspirin. The chemical name for aspirin comes from the willow family name, Salicaceae.
A Whole Plate Palladiotype print from a Calotype (paper) negative.
I live in one of the areas where the Tabeguache tribe lived during the summer months. My photographs are about coming to terms with my relationship with the land, the people, and its history. I want to honor the people, the plants they used, the rocks, and the trees they dwelt among and used to survive and thrive for many centuries. I’ve spent time learning about the symbolism and metaphors they used and I’ve constructed photographs based on historical and contemporary uses of these ideas and beliefs.
The work is made with the 19th-century wet and dry collodion photographic processes as well as the Calotype process (paper negatives) in the Whole Plate format (6.5” x 8.5”). I used a period lens circa 1870 for the work. From the glass and paper negatives, I’ve made Palladiotype prints (Palladium), 1873, and original Kallitype prints (1889). Both are contact printing processes. It was very important for me to use period processes and period gear for these images. The processes and optics have a way of transporting the viewer to that time period (the 1840s - 1890s).
I called this body of work, “In the Shadow of Sun Mountain”. The photographs are all made with the great mountain watching over.
The Ute honored and respected this land and all of its life, never taking more than they needed. The fauna, flora, and landscape represent all that they loved. It provided the shelter, food, and medicine they survived on. Their life here was balanced and good.
Ben Mitchell, guest curator of "Edward S. Curtis: The North American Indian" said "...history is a very powerful force, because history, when you’re immersed in it, isn’t just looking at the past, history constantly informs the present you’re living in — or it better, if we’re paying attention...history also points us to our future that we’re going to share. We learn from history how to live in our present, and how to plan to live in our future.”
I can’t change the past. No one can. But my hope is that the viewers of this work will see the beauty and the tragedy. I want the photographs to reflect the memories of a better time and wrestle with the history and terrible events that followed. My goal is to put a “pebble in the viewer’s shoe”. I want them to contemplate the past, the present, and the future. I hope to inspire, motivate and create compassion and empathy for the people, the land, and all the life on it.
“Art is crucial for transforming death and pain into forms that can in some way enhance the life that remains.”
Robert Jay Lifton
WHITE POPPY
Native Americans found many uses for the alkaloids in the white poppy. Preparations made from different poppy species have been used to treat skin disorders, eye problems, headaches, toothaches, digestive trouble, coughs, colds, and insomnia.
A Whole Plate Palladiotype print from a Calotype (paper) negative.