Programs & Events

Sat May 6, 2023
2:00 - 4:00 pm

Indian Market Lecture Series-Free with Admission

The Photography of Cara Romero

Please join Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), international award-winning fine art photographer in our auditorium, as she shares her proficiency as an artist and explores how her photographs convey collective Native histories, and the ways in which indigeneity expresses itself in modern times, along with her involvement as an artist and her own experiences in the annual Santa Fe’s Indian Market. Free with admission.

About Cara:

Cara Romero is a fine art photographer and an enrolled member of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero was raised between contrasting settings: the rural Chemehuevi reservation in California’s Mojave Desert, and the urban sprawl of Houston, TX. Romero’s identity informs her photography, a blend of fine art and editorial photography, shaped by years of study and a visceral approach to representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and lived experiences from a Native American female perspective.

As an undergraduate at the University of Houston, Romero pursued a degree in cultural anthropology. Disillusioned, however, by academic and media portrayals of Native Americans as bygone, Romero realized that making photographs could do more than anthropology did in words, a realization that led to a shift in medium. Since 1998, Romero’s expansive body of work has been informed by formal training in film, digital, fine art and commercial photography. By staging theatrical compositions infused with dramatic color, Romero takes on the role of storyteller, using contemporary photography techniques to depict the modernity of Native peoples, illuminating Indigenous worldviews and aspects of supernaturalism in everyday life.

Maintaining a studio in Santa Fe, NM, Romero regularly participates in Native American art fairs including Santa Fe’s annual Indian Market. Her award-winning work is included in many public and private collections internationally. Married with three children, she travels between Santa Fe and the Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation, where she maintains close ties to her tribal community and ancestral homelands.  Her photographs explore collective Native histories, and the ways in which indigeneity expresses itself in modern times. Romero firmly believes that Native peoples are as Indigenous today as they were prior to the advent of colonialism.

Photo courtesy of Cara Romero