On View
Not on viewObject number1972/3.23
Church at Picuris, New Mexico
Artist
Laura Gilpin
(American, 1891-1979)
Date1963
Mediumgelatin silver print
Dimensionsimage (flush): 7 3/4 × 9 5/8 in. (19.7 × 24.4 cm)
mount: 14 × 18 in. (35.6 × 45.7 cm)
mat: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
mount: 14 × 18 in. (35.6 × 45.7 cm)
mat: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
Credit LineDirector's Fund
Exhibition History"Kalamazoo Collects Photography," KIA (Mar. 1980).
"Master Photographs from the Permanent Collection," KIA (Sept. 7 - Oct. 24, 1993).
"Framing Moments: Photography from KIA's Permanent Collection," KIA (Feb. 6 - May 16, 2021)
Label TextA prolific chronicler of the American Southwest, Laura Gilpin studied under Clarence White in New York in 1916-18 before returning to her native Colorado to pursue a career as a professional photographer. She is especially known for her representations of the region’s Indigenous peoples and the architecture of their settlements. Her photographs are often captured from vantage points that are less straightforward than the representations of these sites in tourist guidebooks or the paintings of early twentieth-century artists but mimic the unconventional perspectives used in depictions by modernist artists like Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams (both of whom she knew). Though the perspective on the building in Gilpin’s photograph sidesteps recreating the views of the church that helped it become a focus of the sort of regional touristic consumption that perpetuated simplistic conceptions of Pueblo life across the country and around the world, it also reframes the structure as a site of modernist aesthetic interest rather than historical and cultural significance to Picuris Puebloans.
Picuris Pueblo was settled c. 1250, and the Mission San Lorenzo Church there was erected by Spanish missionaries in 1629 as part of their efforts to proselytize the Pueblo’s inhabitants. Photographs like Church at Picuris, New Mexico bring attention to the unusual form of the building, the distinctive traits of adobe architecture, and the longstanding influence of the Catholic Church in the region.
