Transcript of the Video

With an eye on culture:
Helga Teiwes’ photographic explorations of the peoples of the Southwest.

A short video presentation based on interviews with her colleagues and friends.

Interviewer: Ariane Paul, student of American studies and cultural studies University of Leipzig and University of Arizona.

Gwinn Vivian, former associate director, ASM:

…find that Helga was the kind of photographer, and it reflected in largely her personality, and who if she was going to do a job was going to do it absolutely perfectly.

Dr. Ray Thompson, former director, ASM:

I don't have a recollection of her as someone who was attached to a particular big project. She obviously developed new interests after she came here, in the sense that her first focus was on the archaeological recovery and the documentation and so forth. But gradually she became very much interested, as a result of her travels and so forth within the state, in the Indian communities in the Southwest

It was a bigger issue for Helga I think than just documentation. Documentation is sort of a “drudgy” word, you know. It means that you’re just doing something for the sake of getting it done. She really put her heart and soul into this. And she developed a capacity for relating to various people in those communities whether they were the officials who were giving her permission to do it, or the craftsmen that she was photographing, or just people she was photographing for everyday life on the reservation kind of thing.

Gwinn Vivian, former associate director, ASM:

She had established such really good working relationships with the Hopi people as she did with many Native American groups. But she seemed to have a particular affinity for the Hopi and became very interested in Katsina carving and the carvers and did just an incredibly remarkable job; not only in terms of photographing their work, them at work their family life and so on; but she became a ethnographer at that point, in terms of beginning to record a lot of the information she was getting from these individuals.

I don't think she ever went to anybody and said: “What kind of questions should I ask?” “How should I structure my research?” She just intuitively knew that there were probably good ways to ask these people questions. At the same time she was incredibly aware of not causing problems by asking those questions. She realized she was moving into an area that was sacred to the Hopi. At the time she was commenting that she should be, interestingly enough, probably working on baskets and pottery because that was in a sense a safer realm to work in than Katinsas.

But by focusing on the Katsina carvers as opposed to the dolls themselves or the images themselves, I think it gave her not only more comfort in asking those questions, but I think it was also a wonderful way to begin to link with the carvers. And as a result of that she got a lot more information.

Emory Sekaquaptewa, Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, UA:

I know that many people, Hopi people, did consider Helga not only someone who can be trusted in her work but also someone who could help them to become noticed, that their work become noticed. So she was sought out, in a sense, because of her ability to establish good relations with individuals.

Dr. Ray Thompson, former director, ASM:

I think that she made a lot of good friends on the reservations. And I think that many of those people looked upon her as a friend rather than as another Anglo coming to take a few pictures and exploit us in some kind of way. I'm sure that she probably consciously worked to do that because she did not feel that it was appropriate to go and snap a few photographs and run off and leave the people behind. With her this was an enduring relationship and it should be an enduring relationship. It wasn't something that just happened. She worked at it -- and successfully.

Produced by Ariane Paul and Diane Dittemore
Arizona State Museum
2003

Videography
Ariane Paul
Bruce Hilpert
Russ Varineau

Editing
Ariane Paul

Photos Courtesy of Arizona State Museum Photo Collections and University of Arizona Press

music and sound effects multimedia learning lab UA

Special thanks to Helga Teiwes
Susan Luebbermann
Rhod Lauffer
Jennifer du Laney
Gwinn Vivian
Stella Tucker
Dr. Raymond Thompson
Emory Sekaquaptewa
Alexander Lindsay
Multimedia Learning Lab, UA

And the many people whom Helga photographed.