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MARCIA KEEGAN has been photographing
throughout all 19 New Mexico Pueblos and Navajo country for more than 30
years, documenting traditional Southwestern Indian lives, culture and
landscapes with bold, compelling shapes and colors. Celebrating the
natural beauty of the Southwest and the traditions of the Native Americans
who are her friends, she shares their spiritual involvement with
the land and effectively conveys it through her work. She is the only
photographer to have taken pictures in all nineteen New Mexico Pueblos.
A native of the Southwest, Keegan was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
After receiving her degree from the University of New Mexico and working
for a number of years as a photographer for the Albuquerque Tribune
and the Albuquerque Journal, she moved to New York City to pursue a
career as a feature photographer for the Associated Press, then as a
free-lance photographer, covering stories for national magazines and book
publishers. During these years, Keegan used her photography as the medium
to participate in and record the struggles and triumphs of the civil
rights movement, the Vietnam war protests, life in the ghettos and the
fight for equality for all, especially the Native American peoples. Her
goal at this time was illuminating the problems and injustices she
witnessed in hopes that her photos could help bring about change.
In the early 70s, Keegan was living in New York and received a New Mexico
book assignment from Viking. Her purpose was again to expose what was
wrong, the destruction of Black Mesa, with the aim of promoting change.
While back in her adopted state of New Mexico, she discovered a new sense
of peace and of the sacredness of life among all peoples, particularly in
the Pueblo and Navajo cultures. The entire focus of her career changed
from exposing what is wrong to illuminating the beauty and holiness of
what is right. Instead of a book about environmental destruction, she
returned with one about the true meaning of sacred land and the triumph of
the human spirit, Mother Earth, Father Sky. Her involvement in the
fight for the return of the sacred Blue Lake to the Taos Indians lead to
the publication of Taos Pueblo and Its Sacred Blue Lake. Since that
time, Keegan has worked for peace and justice by showing the public
through her books how the traditional values of the Pueblo and Navajo
peoples need to be protected and cherished, how these values of the
sacredness of all life and harmony with the natural world can lead to
world peace. Keegan has traveled to the Himalayans and been involved in
the Tibetan culture as well. In 1979, she introduced the Dalai Lama to the
Hopi.
In 1988 Keegan and her husband, Harmon Houghton, started their own
company, Clear Light Publishing. As vice-president and co-owner, she has
been involved with book design, production, editorial supervision and
publicity/promotion. In keeping with her devotion to the ideals of a
peaceful world, the focus of the publishing company has been books to
enhance the human spirit.
Several books featuring
Keegan’s photographs are available from Clear Light Publishing. These
include the aforementioned Taos Pueblo and Its Sacred Blue Lake (commemorating
in words and photos the return of Blue Lake to the Taos People) and
Mother Earth, Father Sky (a beautiful volume of color photographs
enhanced by Native songs, prayers and chants). Later works include
Enduring Culture (pairing of modern photos by Keegan with those of
frontier photographers, showing how Native American culture has endured
through the years); New Mexico (Keegan’s photographic love poem
to the land and peoples of her adopted home); Pueblo Girls (a
chronicle of how traditional and modern ways mix in the lives of two young
sisters at San Ildefonso Pueblo); The Southwest Indian Cookbook
(Native recipes augmented by bits of history and folklore, illustrated
with Keegan’s color photography); and Pueblo People: Ancient
Traditions, Modern Lives (her greatest work, containing studies of all
19 New Mexico Pueblos, celebrating the beauty of the landscape and the
richness of the cultures and lives coexisting in harmony with that
landscape—all with the intimacy of a personal photo album).
Keegan and Clear Light
have also published several books illuminating the culture and the land of
Tibet and the Himalayas. Ocean of Wisdom features the words of the
Dalai Lama and Keegan’s photographs of Tibet. Ancient Wisdom, Living
Tradition: the Spirit of Tibet in the Himalayas brings alive the
cultural-spiritual traditions of the peoples and the beauty of the lands
of Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, Sikkim, and Ladakh. Recently Keegan’s
photographs have been featured in Glenn H. Mullin’s seminal study on the
role of the feminine in Tibetan Buddhism, Female Buddhas: Women of
Enlightenment in Tibetan Mystical Art.
Keegan’s photographs
are included in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the
White House, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the
Kansas City Museum, the Philbrook Art Museum in Tulsa, the Albuquerque
Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe.
An activist for the
promotion of Native culture, Keegan has served on the board of the
Southwestern Association for Indian Arts and is a member of the Po’pay
Statuary Hall Commission. She has received the Lifetime Achievement Award
from the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council.
Contact Information:
Phone: 505-989-9590
Fax: 505-989-9519
E-mail: marcia@clearlightbooks.com
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