As part of the Brown Bag lecture series, the Clements Center for Southwest Studies hosted “The Early Modernist Photography of John Candelario: A Transcultural Aesthetic” by Stephanie Lewthwaite on Wednesday in the DeGolyer Library.

Lewthwaite is a lecturer of Canadian and American Studies at the University of Nottingham and is currently working on a new project: “Mediating Art Worlds: Cross-Cultural Encounters and Hispano Modernism, 1930-1960.” For this project she is examining the elevation of Spanish culture in Hispano art and Anglo modernism. As a way of determining the result of Hispano art’s interaction with modernist culture, Lewthwaite turned to the black and white photography of John Candelario.

Born of Mexican/Hispano heritage, John Candelario was raised in New Mexico by his grandfather. His grandfather, who owned a primarily Native American trading post, established connections with the local Native Americans in New Mexico.

After his grandfather’s death, Candelario returned to Santa Fe, which, according to Lewthwaite, had become the center for preservation of Hispano culture. Candelario maintained the connections his grandfather had formed with the Native Americans and later used them to gain access to cultural sites and privileges.

Candelario was a primarily self-taught photographer, beginning his work with a camera pawned at his store. He formed a friendship with Edward Weston, an American photographer who spent time in Mexico and New Mexico, and the two went on many photographic expeditions across New Mexico.

In the early 1940s, Candelario met Georgia O’Keeffe at her home in Ghost Ranch, who admired his work as well. She hired him in 1942 to shoot for a brochure of Ghost Ranch.
“O’Keeffe became a source of advice and encouragement,” Lewthwaite said. “And she used Candelario as a source of information about local culture.”

Candelario also gained access to Georgia O’Keeffe’s circle of modernist friends and connections through his photography showing the “aesthetic purity of the Southwest,” according to Lewthwaite. 

Candelario was granted multiple privileges throughout his career, giving him access to Native American ceremonies and structures forbidden to others. This “insider/outsider status,” as Lewthwaite called it, is depicted in many of his photographs, as he uses the people not only as objects of art, but also the subject with an individual personality.

He felt connected to the Native American culture, and experienced nostalgia for the old New Mexico as the world changed around him. Lewthwaite believes he used black and white photography to put modernity to use in sustaining tradition and to “reclaim the traditional life.”