Moki Belles c. 1900

Adam Clark Vroman captured this image of "Moki Belles" on a playing card during a period when the American West was being romanticized, even as its indigenous populations faced displacement and cultural erasure. Vroman, like many photographers of his era, aimed to document what he saw as authentic Native American life. Yet, his work was inevitably shaped by the colonial gaze. This image presents Hopi women, referred to as "Moki Belles"—a term that reflects both admiration and exoticization. The women are arranged in a way that emphasizes their otherness, framed within the logic of a playing card, a token of chance and entertainment. What does it mean to turn people into collectible objects? The image raises questions about how photography can simultaneously preserve and exploit cultural identity. Vroman’s photographs, while valuable as historical records, remind us of the complex and often fraught relationship between the photographer and the photographed.