Images of Acoma
Marmon: Tried to capture ‘real life images of Native peoples’

By Jim Tiffin
Cibola County Bureau

Eagle dancers spread their wings as part of the traditional dance. This photo was taken by Lee Marmon in 1962. [Courtesy Photo]

PUEBLO OF ACOMA — Lee Marmon, the official photographer for the Pueblo of Acoma for decades, has sold his collection of 55,000-plus negatives to the Acoma Cultural Center and Haak’u Museum, which has placed 98 of his photos in a show that began Saturday at the museum.

The cultural center and the museum are located at the base of Sky City, which is recognized as the oldest continually inhabited city on the North American Continent.

“The name of the show is Pueblo Places and Faces,’” and will be on exhibit in the museum until Sept. 30, 2008, Museum Curator Damian Garcia said.

“The photos are a combination of black and white and color, and are 11x14 inches to 20x22 inches in size, and it is strictly a photo exhibit.”

Although some of the photos are in color, the majority are in black and white, Garcia said.

During a special preview showing Friday afternoon to celebrate the opening of the exhibit, Marmon’s retirement and his 82nd birthday, dozens of guests by special invitation only, attended the event.

Marmon’s most famous and most published photo is called “White Man’s Moccasins,” a black and white photo of Jeff Sousa, an Acoma from 1953, wearing Converse sneakers, said Phil Robertson, spokesman for Acoma Business Enterprises.

The photo, which is the opening photo of the exhibit, placed on a display wall as one enters the small exhibit room at the museum, shows Sousa sitting on a small ledge by a wall, wearing a bandanna and holding an unlit cigar in his right hand.

“I was carrying groceries and saw Jeff siting there and asked him to let me take his photo. He said ‘no,’” Marmon told a crowd of about 250 friends during the ceremony honoring his career.

“I tried to talk him into letting me take his picture and I even said ‘Jeff, you let me take your photo last year, let me take another one, and he said no again.

“Finally, after delivering my groceries, I asked Jeff again to let me take his photo and he said, ‘Give me a cigar,’ so I gave him a cigar, the one in the photo, and he let me take his picture,” Marmon said. The audience laughed several times during the telling of this story breaking out in spontaneous applause when he finished.

During the event, Marmon talked to the Independent for a few minutes: “When I was in Alaska in the Army, I saw how beautiful the land was. I wanted to bring something home to show it to my parents so I bought a camera and that started it all.”

When asked what a lengthy career of photography of the land, the people of the pueblos and celebrities, while he was the official photographer of the Bob Hope Desert Classic Golf Tournament in Palm Springs, Calif., did to his view of the world, Marmon said, “I just can’t put it into words to express what it has done for me.”

The exhibit is in a room with a somewhat meandering centerpiece. The photos are nicely framed, each on a white background with glass over the photos on a white wall.

The 98 photos are a mixture of people, landscapes, families and tribal leaders from the past nearly six decades.

Several of the black and white close-ups of some American Indians and of landscapes are the most striking of them all.

While viewing two photos, one atop another, of two American Indians, Jose Teofilo, from 1961; and Dewey Haskie, 1975, one is struck by the strength of character in their faces.

The deeply creased wrinkles in their faces an the looks in their eyes tell a story of determination during hard times.

While looking at the same photos, Rachel Robertson put it best when she said: “Their faces show the years of accumulated knowledge and wisdom and the history of their people.”

Marmon said he tried to capture the “real life images of Native peoples” as part of a written message at the front of the exhibit, which also has a photo of him at a much younger age with a camera leaning against a car.

A black and white photo of an Acoma Convento Hallway, from 1958, shows an adobe hallway with three glassless windows on the right where light spills onto the floor of the hall. There are wooden ladders against the left side of the hall and wooden beams on the ceiling.

The starkness of the photo impresses the eye as the several shades of black turn to different levels of gray and the white seems to be filtered through something fine as it enters.

Photos of Canyon de Chelly in Arizona are displayed and Garcia said these are examples of ancestral pueblos.

There are several photos of celebrities including: “Sammy Davis Junior singing with a microphone in his hand from 1972, Dean Martin from 1978, President Ronald Reagan in 1969 and Bob Hope, from the Desert Classic in 1971.

To contact reporter Jim Tiffin call (505) 287-2197 or e-mail: jtiffin.independent@yahoo.com.