Early Portrait Photographs of Native Americans From the 1890s

Adam Clark Vroman began to photograph around 1892, the same year that he married and moved to Pasadena, California. As an amateur photographer and bookseller, Vroman traveled to the Southwest, especially New Mexico, to photograph in the American Indian pueblos. He is best known for his portrait work there.

Unlike many photographers at the time, he was considered to be extremely respectful of his subjects. Among his photographic accomplishments, Vroman illustrated the 1913 edition of Helen Hunt Jackson's novel Ramona. The bookstore he founded, Vroman's Bookstore, still operates in Pasadena under his surname, though it is no longer in the Vroman family.