Between Two Worlds: The Photography of Lee Marmon

Lee Marmon, Juana Marie Pino, 1959, gelatin silver print, Albuquerque Museum, gift of Cate Stetson, PC2021.72.12.A

Lee Marmon, White Man’s Moccasins, 1954, gelatin silver print, Albuquerque Museum, gift of Cate Stetson, PC2021.72.28

Lee Marmon, Bruce Riley, 1965, gelatin silver print, Albuquerque Museum, gift of Cate Stetson, PC2021.72.22.A

Two Worlds

Photographer Lee Marmon documented his own community.

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF LEE MARMON celebrates one of the first professional Indigenous photographers, a New Mexican with a prolific 60-year career. Lee Marmon’s work spanned decades and cultures, as he reveled in capturing the personalities and beauty of his subjects, both Indigenous and celebrity. Marmon passed away in 2021 at the age of 95.

Born in Laguna Pueblo across the street from his parent’s trading post, Marmon’s life was full of photography from an early

age. His father took photos with a Kodak postcard camera, and photographers such as Edward Curtis stayed with his family on the pueblo. In an article published in 2021 in the Smithsonian’s American Indian magazine, Marmon is quoted, “I guess to a certain extent, my dad was the biggest influence. … I think, in his younger days, he took a lot of pictures. We had a lot of pictures in this old Indian basket.”

Marmon took his first photograph when he was 11 years old, capturing the aftermath of a truck accident on Route 66. His father would encourage him to begin taking photographs of Laguna elders, capturing them in their surroundings. These portraits, taken between 1936 and 1991, were shot with natural light as he went about his day job of working at the pueblo trading post. He was also able to photograph traditions that were closed to the public.

Marmon was a people-person and a storyteller, according to his son, Chris Marmon. To many of his subjects, Lee Marmon was also a friend, able to capture elders in moments of spontaneity. When he started working for the Bob Hope Desert Classic Golf Tournament in Palm Springs, “he would instantly have friends,” says Chris Marmon. “He was really

Lee Marmon, Rosita Johnson, 1958, gelatin silver print, Albuquerque Museum, gift of Cate Stetson, PC2021.72.20.A

Lee Marmon, Buzzard Butte, 1985, gelatin silver print, Albuquerque Museum, gift of Cate Stetson, PC2021.72.31

ON VIEW

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF LEE MARMON

July 30-January 15, 2023

interested in getting to know people. He was a simple person, who loved preserving memories. He told me that his favorite celebrity was Bob Hope, because he was just a really nice person.” One of those friends was Betty Stetson, Chris recounts, whose daughter Cate Stetson, a tribal law attorney, is a member of the Albuquerque Museum Foundation Board. She recently donated some Marmon photographs to the Museum, some of which are included in the exhibition.

Chris talks about spending hours with his father in the darkroom, starting when he was just seven or eight years old, where Lee would put on jazz music and the two would make prints, working their magic to extract expressive black and white images. He preferred a Hasselblad medium format camera, but surprisingly, Chris says, adapted well to digital later in life. He also loved teaching photography and took students from UNM Grants campus to his favorite places to shoot. A frequent subject was Dripping Springs, southwest of Laguna Pueblo.

Over the course of his career, Marmon shot photographs for President and Mrs. Nixon, was presented with a lifetime achievement award, worked for Time Magazine and the New York Times, and photographed the era’s most famous celebrities. However, it is the Laguna photos that he was most proud of— breathtaking landscapes, elders, and others going about their lives. “If you get with some Lagunas and start showing pictures,” Marmon reflected in the Smithsonian article, “immediately they come alive again. People telling stories and reminiscing, and how they knew them. Then . ...they get to where they start telling funny stories. And that really was the goal that I had.”

Lee Marmon, Laguna Buffalo Dancer, 1962, gelatin silver print, Albuquerque Museum, gift of Cate Stetson, PC2021.72.24

Top left: Lee Marmon, Acoma Mission Bell, 1985, gelatin silver print, #2000-017-0031, Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico.

Top right: Lee Marmon, Walter Sarracino, 1963, gelatin silver print, Albuquerque Museum, gift of Cate Stetson, PC2021.72.19.A