FREDERICK MONSEN Hopi Woman on Ladder, 1900s, 16.6x10.5" on paper 19x12' Gelatin Silver Print. Signed in image lower right. ASG# FM/1237

A print of the same image at the Huntington Library has Monsen's typed label on back that says: "Hopi Indians. Arizona. The Hopi are rather small of stature, but muscular and agile. Both sexes have reddish brown skin, rather high cheekbones, straight broad nose, slanting eyes, and large mouths with gentle expression. The hair is usually straight and is gathered behind in a sort of queue and tied at the neck. On reaching puberty the girls dress their hair in whorls at the sides of the head in imitation of the squash blossom, the symbol of fertility among the Hopi." Credit: https://calisphere.org/item/fada519c47384c11386e3482ab2f6e4f/

Frederick Monsen (b. 1865, Bergen Norway; d. 1929) moved to Salt Lake City with his family in 1868. His father was a photographer and he trained as a painter. By 1886 Monsen was avidly, if unofficially, photographing in the Southwest with the U.S. Geological (Mexican American Boundary) Survey. He photographed with Generals Crook and Miles at the end of the campaign against the Apaches in 1886, the Brown Stanton Survey (1889-1890), the Salton Sea Expedition (1891), Death Valley and other California Deserts (1893), Southwestern Indians (1894 -1911), and the Yosemite National Park Boundary Survey (1896). A colleague of Adam Clark Vroman and Arnold Genthe, Monsen favored a handheld Kodak camera, which allowed him to photograph his subjects in candid rather than posed pictures. In 1906, his studio and negatives were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake. To reconstruct his images after the loss he made copy negatives and borrowed negatives from Vroman and others.

Good. Mild wear. Edge wear, dirt margins. Stain upper right corner of image.