NEWS
RELEASE

New Exhibition At State Museum Honors S.W. Photographer

Date of Release: September 8, 2003

(University of Arizona, Tucson) Arizona State Museum is kicking off the fall season with a new photographic exhibition entitled WITH AN EYE ON CULTURE: A HELGA TEIWES PHOTO RETROSPECTIVE. The exhibit opens Oct. 11 at the museum's annual Open House.

Helga Tiewes stands among the last century's most accomplished documentary photographers of the Southwest. As the museum's staff photographer from 1964 to 1993, Helga had rare opportunities to photograph the cultural and artistic traditions, the lifeways, and the peoples of Indian communities throughout the region. She began her career at ASM working for Dr. Emil Haury, who hired her to document his 1964 excavations at Snaketown on the Gila River Indian Reservation. For the next three decades, the intrepid native of Dusseldorf, Germany, traversed the Southwest region and captured thousands of images, which are now part of the museum's extensive photographic archives.

Breaking with the tradition of much anthropological photography of the early 20th century, Teiwes approached her subjects as individuals, not as objects. Her informal portraits are intensely personal and capture the every day lives of the many southwestern Indian people. Her photographic projects have resulted in landmark books on Navajo culture, Hopi carvers, and Hopi basket weavers. Indeed, Helga's photographs have carried images of the Southwest to an international audience.

The exhibition, curated by ASM Diane Dittemore, includes over 50 photographs that reflect the broad scope of Teiwes' career -- her artistic eye and her obvious respect for, and appreciation of, the people and places she captured on film.

Bringing a background in video photography, graduate student Ariane Paul conducted interviews with many of Helga's colleagues, as well as some of her Native American subjects. Excerpts from these interviews will play on video monitors within the exhibition gallery.

Helga herself was involved in the exhibit's planning. In addition to providing fascinating and gripping biographical information (childhood memories of the bombing of Dusseldorf during WWII), she has generously agreed to allow the museum to include examples of her works produced before she came to ASM and those she created "after hours."

Join Helga at the public opening! She will be giving personal tours of the exhibition and will be signing copies of her books.