From March 19 to April 13, people can visit the exhibition "Native Americans, a private landscape", mounted in Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery, in the Stelline Refectory, in Milan. The exhibition includes more than 160 photographs, taken between 1890 and 1905 in south-western America and in the North of Mexico, by the American Adam Clark Vroman and the Norwegian Carl Lumholtz. These pictures were never exhibited, before.

The exhibition is organised by the Modena Civic Gallery, in association with Credito Valtellinese Banking Group and Edimar Books, and sponsored by Usis, the USA General Consulate in Milan.

Adam Clark Vroman was born in La Salle, Illinois, in 1856. His parents, who were from Holland, had previously lived in New York and then they had moved to Illinois, in 1835.

In 1892, he married Esther H. Griest and moved to Rockford for job reasons. In the same year, he left for Pasadena, where he hoped that his wife, who suffered from tuberculosis, would find a healthier climate. Unfortunately, Esther died in Flora Dale, her native town in Pennsylvania, two years later. After coming back to Pasadena, Vroman, in association with J.D. Glasscock, opened a shop, where they sold art books and photographic equipment. The shop immediately met with the favour of the public. Vroman earned enough money to go to the Indian regions situated between Arizona and New Mexico. From 1897 to 1904, he went several times there. In those years, he travelled a lot (Yosemite National Park, Spanish missions and other missions in East America). In 1903, he went to Japan. In 1909, he went to France and Germany, where he visited the Loire Castles and the Reno Castles. In 1914, he travelled along the American East Coast and in the Canadian Rockies. He died in 1916, in Altadena, California.

Vroman was a cultivated, very creative man who loved art literature. His education considerably influenced Vroman's photographic approach to the aboriginal culture, to the simple and somewhat unapproachable world of the native Hopi, Zuni, and Navajo.

His photography documented the daily life in a simple way, without extremes. Nevertheless, he accurately studied it. He tried to understand the aboriginal culture also through gestures, as well as through rituals. He interpreted the aborigines' eyes, accepting their times, which was an essential condition in order to overcome their apathy face to the white race. A sort of giving up for a future with no history, a slow and inexorable resignation to progress.

Carl Lumholtz was born in Norway, in 1851. He died in Norway, in 1921. He studied botany, geography, zoology and anthropology. He spent all his life travelling around the various continents, studying and freezing various aspects of the human life, thanks to photography. Photographs, in fact, were essential documents that integrated Lumholtz's ethnographic writings. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences and of the Anthropological Society. His first journey to Australia was very important for Lumholtz, because the cohabitation with the aborigines had made him realise that he had to live strictly in contact with the aboriginal populations in order to understand their characteristics and habits. Therefore, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and by the American Geographic Society, he organised a journey to Mexico, where he stayed from 1890 to 1898. In those years, he collected unique material regarding many local populations of the South-western America (Coras, Huicholes, Mayos da Sinaloa, Hopi, Pimas), Northern America and Southern America Tepehuanes. He reached the western ends of the Sierra, where the Nahuas de Jalisco lived. Finally, he stayed with the Taracos of the Michoacan. He was so interested in the Mexican aborigines that he came back to visit them many times. In 1909, he organised his last journey to Mexico and met the Yaquis, the Sertis and the Papagos.

Undoubtedly, Mexico represented Lumholtz's most important anthropological and ethnographic experience. Thanks to the photo exhibits, we can discover these various and variegated cultures human and spiritual richness. In fact, Lumholtz became acquainted with the magical and religious world that regulated, through rituals, the aborigines' everyday life. The fiesta, for instance, was the moment in which men searched their equilibrium with the forces of nature, in order to maintain the whole group well being. The magical life in harmony with nature is perhaps the most amazing aspect of Lumholtz's pictures. The author does not tell his experience through photo reportage. Since he lived within the local communities, he made an actual photo journal.

The exhibition, which has been mounted and produced by the Modena Civic Gallery, will be also mounted at the Palazzina dei Giardini, in Modena. In addition to Modena Civic Gallery, Pasadena Public Library (Pasadena, California) and the Istituto Nacional Indigenista (Mexico City) collaborated to the exhibition project. Filippo Maggia and Gabriella Roganti for the Modena Civic Gallery, Carolyn Garner for Pasadena Public Library and Maria Eugenia Lopez Brun for the Istituto Nacional Indigenista are attending to the exhibition.

Brochure Edimar Books.

Next event:Exhibition Augustin Cardenas Sculptures, 1947 - 1997
Period : April 23 - June 13 1997

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