Susanne Page, whose intimate photographs of the Hopi tribe and Navajo nation opened a rare window on the everyday culture of Indigenous people in America’s Southwest, died on May 13 in Alexandria, Va. She was 86.
The cause of her death, at the home of her daughter, Kendall Barrett, was brain cancer, another daughter, Lindsey Truitt, said.
Page was in the midst of a 40-year career as a photographer for the United States Information Agency when she began creating vivid images of Native Americans and the flora and fauna that sustained them — work that embraced the beauty of the natural world and its profound spiritual significance to those Indigenous people.
Her work appeared in magazines like National Geographic and Smithsonian and in several books.
Along the way she introduced the subject of Native Americans of the Southwest to Jake Page, an editor and columnist at Smithsonian.
Persons:
Susanne Page, Kendall Barrett, Lindsey Truitt, Page, Jake Page
Organizations:
United States Information Agency, Geographic, Smithsonian
Locations:
Navajo, Southwest, Alexandria, Va