Photography

Dugan Aguilar (Maidu/Northern Paiute/Achomawi), a man of few words, speaks his heart through his photography. With nature's light and a camera, he creates images of indigenous California people, photographs that embody the depth of their subjects' beauty, strength, and humor. His portraits of people, places, and ceremonies combine the intimacy of family photos with the technical skill of a masterful artist. His photographic works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and a generation of California Indian people have grown accustomed to seeing his photographs in their homes, museums, and News from Native California. Aguilar's photos defy the romanticized and melodramatic images by which Native people are often depicted. Ranging from portraits of military veterans, basket makers, and dancers to meditative landscapes, Aguilar's work documents—and contributes to—the perseverance and renewal of Native California's living, vibrant cultures.

When L. Frank and Marina Drummer went on the road in 2002, they set out to visit as many people from different California tribes as possible. Crisscrossing the state, they taped hundreds of hours of interviews and collected copies of nearly fifteen hundred family photos. The documentary project, funded by the California State Library and LEF Foundation, paints an unprecedented portrait of California’s indigenous people using their own words and photographs from their own family albums. In turns moody, beautiful, warm, and humorous, First Families is a one-of-a-kind book that combines extremely personal images with text that gives readers a broader, deeper view of Indian history and many complex living cultures.

No need to hop on a plane to the East Coast! California has beautiful fall foliage, especially in the Sierra Nevada, which glows red and golden every year with aspens, cottonwoods, dogwoods, maples, and oaks. This compact, lively guide shows visitors where and how to capture the best images of turning leaves in the eastern Sierra, Tahoe, and Yosemite, as well as destinations off the beaten track. Mitchell's advice is suitable for photographers of all levels, whether tourists who want to share their experience with friends or professionals seeking advice for dealing with the special challenges of fall photography. More than a manual of technical considerations, though, California's Fall Color encourages us to be overwhelmed by beauty—to take home an image containing the color but, just as importantly, the essence of that sublime feeling.