ABSTRACT
Armer’s art school training and her friendship with the celebrity photographer Arnold Genthe saw her opening a high-class portrait studio in San Francisco in the late 1890s. Once married, she abandoned this career for the one of art photography, a move that saw her entering the elite world of Berkeley’s camera clubs. For more than fifteen years she made photographs of people, iconic historic spots around San Francisco including its China Town, in the fashionable Pictorialist style, winning countless prizes and awards. An abrupt change of direction occurred following a period of crisis. In place of portraits and cityscapes, she began recording the sacred culture of the Hopi and Navajo of the American Southwest seeing this as a body of spiritual knowledge of great interest to many westerners. Armer went on to write award-winning children’s books about the Navajo and Hopi which she and her husband illustrated. It is argued that Armer’s life was one of extraordinary privilege compared to most women photographers and the Native Americans she photographed. Her work in the Southwest earned her praise from contemporary anthropologists, but today many critics regard it as amounting to cultural appropriation.
