Laura Gilpin

The Hocus-pocus of the Universe

The winner of the prestigious Walt Whitman award for her book "The Hocus Pocus of the Universe" completed her second book of poetry "The Weight of a Soul" while living in Fairhope, Alabama, just before her death. It reflects the values she embraced while working as a registered nurse.

The Weight of a Soul

"This is a book of superb photographs. Its portraits of individuals and family groups convey a quality of intimacy and serenity; its landscapes spread out the dramatic setting of desert, mountain, and canyon in which these people live; and its scenes of daily activity show many of the details of the way their life has been lived. Among the pictorial records of Navajo country and life, Miss Gilpin's volume deserves a special place. --American Anthropologist "This is not a brand new book, nor a best-seller here today and gone tomorrow. It is record of the Navajo people and their country, a book to keep and to refer to over and over again, always with deep pleasure. Do friends ask you about the Navajos? Send them this book, for it is the heart of the tribe. --The Navajo Times "This book can't be summarized successfully. It needs to be seen and read, and then savoured again and again for a joyous adventure in beauty and spirit. --Santa Fe New Mexican ." . . a touching tribute to The People, to their endurance and their adaptability, to their vanishing way of life and to the new one opening ahead of them. --Sacramento Bee A contemporary of Mary Austin, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Willa Cather, Laura Gilpin was unique among women chroniclers of the Southwest because she worked in photography. She perceived the region as an environment for human activity rather than a place for untouched beauty, and her empathy for her subjects is evident in her work. Even in her eighties--ignoring the physical infirmities of age--she would camp overnight to be near a place she wanted to photograph at the break of day. The vast empty stretches of the southwestern desert did not deter her. She thought nothing ofdriving several hundred miles to make one image of a Navajo ceremony or making a long flight in a small plane to see a particular mountain peak. Gilpin's sixty-year career established her as one of the outstanding photographers of the twentieth century. Here are her pictures of the Navaho people and the stories of their lives in the 1950s and 1960s.

Laura Gilpin

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