Moki Woman and Baby c. 1900

This vintage photograph, “Moki Woman and Baby,” was captured by Adam Clark Vroman using photographic processes. It is printed on a playing card, in a commercial gesture meant for mass consumption. What’s interesting is the meeting of worlds here – the world of studio portraiture and the industrial production of playing cards, the commercial interest in the ‘exotic’ other, and the intimate portrayal of a Moki woman and her child. We might consider the card as an act of appropriation, commodifying an image of indigenous life for a popular market. It uses photography, with its aura of truth, to create a collectible object for a society eager to consume images of faraway peoples. The use of the playing card, with its associations of chance and entertainment, adds another layer of complexity, reducing cultural experience into a game. So, it’s through the layers of materiality and making that we can understand the cultural and social dynamics at play in this image, inviting us to look beyond the surface and consider the power relationships embedded within.