Large Format (10) Photographs by Navajo Visual Anthropologist John Adair (1913-1997)

1938. Photography. Ten large format views ranging in size from 15 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches to 19 1/4 x 15 1/2 inches. Most of them are mounted; all are dated 1938 with the exception of one 1940 print. Photographs are all identified in manuscript in an unknown hand. We believe the prints themselves were made in the later 20th century. Most have the initials, in pen, JAC on the verso along with the title repeated from the front. All are in very good condition. Several have very light soiling and a couple shows small nicks along the edge but no damage to the actual print. John Adair spent over 20 years living in and around the Navajo Reservation working as a visual and medical anthropologist. In the 1930's he lived at Many Farms, Arizona working with the Cornell-Navajo Field Health Research Project and in Pine Springs, Arizona while working on the Navajo Filmmaking Project. After serving in World War Two Adair lived at Zuni Pueblo while working on his (unpublished) dissertation on the World War Two veterans from Zuni. He become the University of New Mexico's first doctoral candidate in anthropology in 1948. He served as chief anthropologist for the Navajo Reservation from 1953 to 1960. He had a strong interest in Navajo and Pueblo silversmiths; his best known work is The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths. He later published Through Navajo Eyes, documenting his work filming the Navajo people and teaching them how to record their lives through film. The images in this collection all date to 1938 with the exception of the view "At Flagstaff Pow-Wow 1940". Adair was living at Pine Springs in 1938 and had ample opportunity to document his Navajo neighbors. One favorite subject was the Burnside Family of Pine Springs. Tom Burnside was a well known Navajo Silversmith; his wife Mabel Burnside Myers a respected Navajo Weaver. John Adair published a view of Tom Burnside pulling wire in The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths, which is similar to one of our views of Tom Burnside, from a slightly different angle. The collection also includes a portrait of two Burnside children and an image of a weaver who may be Mabel. An additional portrait from Window Rock features Tom Burnside with Sam Yazzi, a subject in one of Adair's films about the Navajo. Several portraits are striking with Adair's subjects staring intently into the camera; a pose likely facilitated by Adair's close relationship with the Navajo community. These photos are remarkable in their clarity and detail, highlighting Navajo clothing, hairstyles and providing a view into everyday life on the Navajo reservation in 1938. In addition to the Navajo images, the collection includes a portrait of Kasinelu who was dubbed "the last Zuni transvestite" by anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons in a paper published in the American Anthropologist, Vol. 41 No. 2 in 1939. Adair visited Zuni in June 1938 and made several portraits of Kasinelu. Parsons had documented four Zuni transvestites in a paper in 1916 with only Kasinelu still living in 1938. We have had no luck finding Adair's negative collection; his papers are at the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe. While Adair was known for his work with motion pictures and was rarely seen without a camera, we find few examples of his still photography with no examples available within the trade nor noted within collections as of April 2022. These 10 prints were acquired through the estate of scholar, publisher and artist Ernie Bulow of Gallup, New Mexico. "After taking a degree in English in the early sixties Ernie Bulow worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, living in Gallup and teaching English at Fort Wingate on the Navajo Reservation. Following receipt of a doctorate from the University of Utah, he returned to New Mexico, where he traded in Indian jewelry and kachinas and opened a bookstore, among other activities." (https: //ehillerman. Unm.edu/erniebulow) Bulow befriended many Navajo and worked closely with writer Tony Hillerman and Navajo artist Ernest Franklin in publishing several books. It is likely that Bulow and Adair knew each other and that Bulow acquired the prints directly from Adair. .