Nancy Wood (1936–2013) was a prolific writer, poet, and editor who took up photography after she separated from her husband Myron Wood in 1969. During their eight year marriage, Nancy edited a series of general interest books that paired her text with Myron’s photographs. Those include Colorado: Big Mountain Country (1969) and Hollering Sun (1972), an illustrated prose poem that laid the groundwork for her own Taos Pueblo photo book published in 1989.
Nancy Wood: Tony Lucero, owner of the Palace Hotel in Antonito, Colorado, 1976. From “The Grass Roots People,” 1978.
Wood’s first project without Myron was a collaboration with the legendary Farm Security Administration photography director Roy E. Stryker (1893–1975), who she described as “the greatest influence on my life.” [1]
According to her published account, the two first met at MoMA in 1962 during a private reception for The Bitter Years, an exhibition of Depression-era FSA photographs curated by Edward Steichen. [2] When Stryker retired and returned to his hometown of Montrose, Colorado, he enlisted Wood to help create a more positive version of the show that would emphasize kinship and functionality in small-town America.
In This Proud Land: America 1935–1943 As Seen in the FSA Photographs was published in 1973. Wood contributed an extensive essay about Stryker and their selection process; ultimately, she notes, Stryker’s final selection is not just an evocation of an idealistic childhood in Montrose but also an indictment of eroded values in a dehumanized America.
She picked up the camera in earnest in the early seventies when the historian Bill Moyers asked her to take some stills during a film shoot in northwestern Colorado. [3] Several years later she returned to the contact sheets, selected half a dozen frames, and submitted a set of prints to the Colorado Centennial Commission with a grant proposal to document rural Colorado. (She supported her proposal by including an adaptation of Stryker’s FSA shooting scripts, which detailed exactly what kind of photograph he wanted each photographer to make.)
To her surprise, the Commission granted her $12,000 to photograph for a year and produce a book and exhibition. The project was published in 1978 as The Grass Roots People, a concise document that pairs environmental portraits and contextual landscapes with an interview-based text. The exhibition never came to fruition, and by some accounts the project ended in acrimony with the funders (much as Myron Wood’s documentation of Georgia O’Keefe would in the mid-eighties).
Nancy Wood: Leona and Curtis Schrimp, Wild Horse, Colorado, population twelve, 1978. From “The Grass Roots People,” 1978.
Taos Pueblo was altogether more substantive. In contrast to Myron Wood’s somewhat forced images taken for Hollering Sun, Nancy Wood’s photo essay reveals a practiced eye; her ethnographic approach emphasized the preservation of ancient tradition amidst the incursion of modern life into the pueblo.
In the eyes of its critics, Taos Pueblo revealed too many uncomfortable aspects of pueblo life. Vine deLoria’s introduction addresses the conundrum facing well-intended outsiders like Wood; to show prevailing conditions “harmful to the Indian cause” (such as poverty and addiction) could be viewed as intrusive and inappropriate, but to ignore those same conditions might conversely be interpreted as whitewashing reality—an accusation leveled at Laura Gilpin’s Enduring Navaho publication, which preceded Taos Pueblo by a decade and was based on three solid decades of work. [4]
Nancy Wood: Hauling water for drinking, cooking, and washing from Taos Creek; Bottom: Fixing the family car on a Saturday afternoon. From Taos Pueblo, 1989.
Wood had, in fact, experienced controversy following the publication of her book When Buffalo Free The Mountains: The Survival of America’s Ute Indians in 1980. According to her daughter, India, the Utes had been infuriated by Wood’s allegations of Native government incompetence and corruption. But like her mentor, Roy Stryker, she gave such considerations little regard.
Taos Pueblo was her last project as a photographer. After a second FSA collection titled Heartland New Mexico: Photographs from the Farm Security Administration was published (also in 1969), she returned her attention to prose and poetry. She was working on a memoir titled Miss America when she died in 2013 at her home in New Mexico.
Nancy Wood: Entrance, Taos Pueblo, 1985. From Taos Pueblo, 1989.
[1] Nancy Wood quotes from Eye of the West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007.
[2] The Bitter Years: 1935-1941 Rural America as seen by the photographers of the Farm Security Administration. Curated by Edward Steichen, October–November 1962. Installation views of the 171 photographs confirm the show’s emphasis on hardship and misery.
[3] A more emotional impetus for her wanting to be successful as a photographer, as proposed by her daughter, India, was to avenge her abandonment by Myron, for whom success was elusive.
[4] Gilpin’s images of Navajo in New Mexico, published as The Enduring Navaho (sic) (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968) have become increasingly susceptible to criticism. Nevertheless, in her biographer Martha Sandweiss’s words, the ethnographic portrait she created “established her as an important commentator on the cultural geography of the Southwest and the culture of two of its native peoples.”
The Colorado Photo History blog is the online presence for “Outside Influence,” a book project by Rupert Jenkins. As always, please leave a comment or a suggestion for future posts, and visit #Colorado Photo History on Instagram and Facebook.
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