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Carl Moon Photographs of Indians of the Southwest and Oklahoma
photCL 313
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Title: Carl Moon Photographs of Indians of the Southwest and Oklahoma, 1904-1917
Dates: 1904-1917
Collection Number: photCL 313
Creator:
Moon, Carl, 1878-1948.
Extent:
293 photographs in 17 oversize portfolio boxes: prints (approx. 13 x 16 inches) on oversize mounts (approx. 22 x 26 inches).
Also includes a typescript index by Carl Moon and 1 box of ephemera and newspaper clippings.
Repository:
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Photo Archives
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, California 91108
Phone: (626) 405-2191
Email: reference@huntington.org
URL: http://www.huntington.org
Abstract: This collection of photographs by photographer Carl Moon documents Native Americans living in Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma
between 1904 and 1917.
The primary tribes represented are Hopi, Navajo and Taos Pueblo Indians, but there are also Osage, Apache and several
other Southwestern tribes. There are many portraits,
as well as posed, romantic scenes depicting storytelling, hunting, weaving, or playing instruments. Additional candid
views show people in their daily activities, pueblos,
and dance ceremonies.
Language of Material: The records are in English.
Open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information, contact Reader
Services.
The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to quote from or publish images of this material,
nor does it charge fees for such activities. The responsibility for identifying the copyright holder, if there is one, and
obtaining necessary permissions rests with the researcher.
[Identification of item], Carl Moon Photographs of Indians of the Southwest and Oklahoma. The Huntington Library, San Marino,
California.
Purchased by Henry E. Huntington from Carl Moon, 1923.
Carl E. Moon (originally spelled Karl) was born in Wilmington, Ohio in 1878. After graduation from high school, he served
two years with the Ohio National Guard before apprenticing with various photographers in Ohio, West Virginia and Texas. He
moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1903, where he set up a photography studio and began making "art studies" of the Native
Americans of the Southwest, both in photographs and in oil paintings, sometimes living for weeks at a time in Navajo villages.
From 1905-1906, Moon had a short-lived partnership in Albuquerque with businessman Thomas F. Keleher, called the Moon-Keleher
Studio. After the partnership dissolved, Moon continued working, photographing carefully selected Indian "subjects" in a romantic,
posed style. His photographs began appearing in magazines and he exhibited at the Museum of Natural History in New York. President
Theodore Roosevelt invited Moon to exhibit his Native American photographs at the White House.
In 1907, Moon signed a contract with the Fred Harvey Company to produce photographs for what would be the Fred Harvey Collection
of Southwest Indian Pictures. Beginning in 1911, he operated out of El Tovar Studio in the Grand Canyon. While employed by
the Fred Harvey Co., he also worked as a photographer for the Santa Fe Railroad. For seven years, from 1907 to 1914, Moon
photographed the native people of the Southwest, in his studio and in their villages. His images appeared (often uncredited)
in brochures and publications for both companies.
Moon resigned from Fred Harvey Co. in 1914, and he and his second wife, Grace Purdie Moon, moved to Pasadena, California,
where he continued to work as a photographer and painter. In 1923, Henry E. Huntington purchased from Moon 293 large, mounted
photographic prints and 12 oil paintings (12 more paintings were purchased in 1925). This remains the largest and most complete
collection of Carl Moon's work extant.
In 1924, Moon began work on "Indians of the Southwest," a set of 100 of his finest prints. Published in 1936, only ten copies
were ever produced. With his wife Grace, he also wrote and illustrated many children's books about the Indians of the Southwest.
Moon died in 1948, in San Francisco, at the home of his daughter.
This collection of photographs by photographer Carl Moon documents Native Americans living in Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma
between 1904 and 1917.
In a letter to Henry Huntington, Feb. 12, 1923, Moon describes these photographs as "a complete collection of my Indian
pictures made from the beginning of my work in 1904 to 1917.
It includes … the pick of the Fred Harvey collection that I made for them during the period of my contract with them,
1907 to 1914, and my own collection made since the latter date."
Moon mostly traveled by himself, and spent time getting to know his subjects before photographing them. He seems to have
made a series of shots of his subjects, sometimes with different
attire or props, and sometimes assigning different titles to the photographs (see images 214, 225, 235, for example).
Besides the portraits, there are scenes of Indians in their daily activities, including baking bread in outdoor ovens, gathering
water in pots, riding horses and tending livestock.
There are also views of the Hopi Snake Dance, and the Corn Dance at Santo Domingo.
Almost all of the photographs are signed "Karl Moon" – his name until 1918, when he changed the spelling to Carl. Many of
the prints are also stamped "copyright Fred Harvey" which
indicates they were made while Moon was under contract there, 1907-1914. Moon also copyrighted many of his own works,
and a dated copyright stamp is embossed in the prints.
The copyright date does not always indicate the year the photograph was made – it could be several years later (see image
214, for example).
Other items in collection
Box 18:
- Typescript introduction and index to the photographs, titled "A Brief Account of the Making of this Collection of Indian
Pictures," by Carl Moon, 1924, 54 pp.
- Newspaper clippings related to Moon, 1904-1936 (bulk 1911-1923).
- Exhibition brochure for artist Thomas Moran, mentioning "Karl Moon," 1916.
Sources consulted:
Driebe, Tom.
In Search of the Wild Indian: Photographs and Life Works by Carl and Grace Moon.Moscow, Pa.: Maurose Publishing Co., 1997.
Faris, James C.
Navajo and photography: a critical history of the representation of an American people.Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
Moon, Carl. "A Brief Account of the Making of this Collection of Indian Pictures," 1924. (Part of this collection), Huntington
Library.
Alternative Form of Materials Available
Visit the Huntington Digital Library to view additional digitized images from the
Native American Photographs Project.
- Copy Photographs from Carl Moon Negatives of Indians of the Southwest and Oklahoma, approximately 1903-1917 (photCL 195).
This is a set of contact prints only; there are no negatives.
- Carl Moon Family photograph collection (photCL 484).
- Carl Moon's paintings. The Huntington Library has oil paintings by Carl Moon based on his photographs. Moon intended his
paintings "to give the student of the future the true coloring of the Indian and his surroundings." Please contact Art Collections
for additional information.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the
Huntington Library's Online Catalog.
Moon, Carl, 1878-1948.
Nampeyo, approximately 1856-1942.
Acoma Indians -- Photographs.
Apache Indians -- Photographs.
Arapaho Indians -- Photographs.
Cheyenne Indians -- Photographs.
Cliff-dwellings--Arizona -- Photographs.
Havasupai Indians -- Photographs.
Hopi Indians -- Photographs.
Hopi Indians--Rites and ceremonies -- Photographs.
Indian baskets--Southwest, New -- Photographs.
Indians of North America--Southwest, New -- Photographs.
Indians of North America--Great Plains -- Photographs.
Isleta Indians -- Photographs.
Kivas -- Photographs.
Laguna Indians -- Photographs.
Looms -- Photographs.
Mission churches--New Mexico -- Photographs.
Navajo Indians -- Photographs.
Osage Indians -- Photographs.
Pueblo dance -- Photographs.
Pueblo pottery -- Photographs.
Pueblo Indians -- Photographs.
Pueblos--Arizona -- Photographs.
Pueblos—New Mexico -- Photographs.
Ruins -- Photographs.
Taos Indians -- Photographs.
Weaving -- Photographs.
Zuni Indians -- Photographs.
Arizona -- Photographs
New Mexico -- Photographs
Oklahoma -- Photographs
Acoma Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs
Chelly, Canyon de (Ariz.) -- Photographs
Cochiti (N.M.) -- Photographs
First Mesa (Ariz. : Mesa) -- Photographs
Isleta Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs
Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico -- Photographs
Nambe Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs
Oraibi (Ariz.) -- Photographs
Pueblo of San Ildefonso, New Mexico -- Photographs
Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico -- Photographs
San Felipe Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs
San Juan Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs
Santo Domingo Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs
Second Mesa (Ariz. : Mesa) -- Photographs
Taos Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs
Tesuque Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs
Walpi (Ariz.) -- Photographs
Zuni (N.M.) -- Photographs
Photographs.
Portraits.
Landscape photographs.
Ephemera.