Laura Gilpin (April 22, 1891 – November 30, 1979) was an American photographer.
Gilpin is known for her photographs of Native Americans, particularly the Navajo and Pueblo, and Southwestern landscapes. Gilpin began taking photographs as a child in Colorado and formally studied photography in New York from 1916 to 1917 before returning to her home in Colorado to begin her career as a professional photographer.
Gilpin was the daughter of Frank Gilpin and Emma Miller. Frank was a cattle rancher from Philadelphia, while Emma grew up in St. Louis and Chicago. Although Emma moved to Colorado to be with her husband, she longed for the more cultured surroundings of big cities. When Gilpin was born, her parents had to travel to a home in Austin Bluffs, some 65 miles (105 km) from their ranch at Horse Creek because this was the location that was closest to a doctor. As this was her first child Mrs. Gilpin wanted to ensure the safety of her daughter in any way possible.
Gilpin enjoyed exploring the outdoors as a child, and her father encouraged her to go camping and hiking in the Colorado landscape. Gilpin's father took several jobs during her childhood, and in 1902 he moved to Durango, Mexico to manage a mine. Several months after he moved there Gilpin's mother joined him, leaving their two children (Laura and her brother) in the care of the directors of Gilpin's school, Mr. and Mrs. William Stark.
In 1903, for her twelfth birthday, Gilpin received a Kodak Brownie Camera (and later received a developing tank for Christmas). Gilpin used this camera incessantly for several years. She considered the year 1904 to be a very important point in her life. During this year, Gilpin's mother sent her to visit her closest friend and Gilpin's namesake, Laura Perry, in St. Louis. Gilpin was there during the great Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Perry was blind, and it was Gilpin's task to describe every exhibit to her in detail. They visited the fair every other day for a month, and she later said "The experience taught me the kind of observation I would have never learned otherwise."
Gilpin's mother encouraged her at an early age to study music, and she was educated at eastern boarding schools, including the New England Conservatory of Music, from 1904 to 1908. On her first trip to the East her mother took her to New York to have her portrait taken by well-known photographer Gertrude Käsebier. Later when she decided to become a photographer, Gilpin asked Käsebier to be her mentor. Over the years they developed a lifelong friendship.
When family finances declined, Gilpin left school and returned to Colorado. She enjoyed exploring the outdoors, and she would often visit General William Jackson Palmer, who took her horseback riding and walking around the surrounding areas of their home. On these excursions Palmer would teach the Gilpin about the plants, animals, and other wildlife that they would encounter, laying the foundation for her passion for the landscape, which would become the subject of many of her photographs.
In an attempt to support her growing interest in photography, Gilpin started a business raising turkeys at her family's ranch. Her poultry business was widely successful and was featured in a Denver newspaper in 1913. She was able to use the proceeds from raising turkeys to fund trips to the East Coast to further her skills in photography. While she formally studied photography on the East Coast, Gilpin worked on her autochrome skills whenever possible from home as well. She photographed everything from her chickens and turkeys to her brother and the landscape. She eventually sold the turkey operation and continued to push her photography career forward.
In 1916 she moved to New York to study photography, but she returned to Colorado Springs in 1918 after becoming seriously ill from influenza. Her mother hired a nurse, Elizabeth Warham Forster "Betsy", to care for her. Gilpin and Forster became friends and, later, companions. Gilpin frequently photographed Forster during the more than fifty years they were together, sometimes placing her in scenes with other people as though she were part of a tableau she happened to come upon. They remained together, with occasional separations necessitated by available jobs, until Forster's death in 1972. After Gilpin recovered she opened her own commercial photography studio in Colorado Springs. In 1924 the Pictorial Photographers of America awarded Gilpin her first New York show.
In 1924, Gilpin's mother died and she was left to care for her father who continued to move from job to job. Between 1942 and 1944 she lived in Wichita, Kansas, where she worked for the Boeing Company photographing airplanes. She left there in 1944, shortly after her father's death, and returned to her beloved Colorado. She continued working and photography throughout the Southwest until her death in 1979. Gilpin is buried at Evergreen Cemetery, Colorado Springs. Elizabeth "Betsy" Warham Forster (1886-1972) is buried in the same cemetery, albeit in a different plot.
Education and career as a photographer
Gilpin made her earliest dated autochrome in 1908 when she was 17 years old. This photography technique had only become widely available that year, which is a testament to Gilpin's early dedication to photography. In 1915, she traveled to the Panama–California Exposition in San Diego and the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco expositions as a companion for a friend of her mother's. At these expositions, Gilpin developed an interest in sculpture, architecture, and native cultures. She later recalled that "There was practically no art interest in Colorado Springs in those early days...I remember Harvey Young was the only painter in town and I don't think there was a sculptor. I knew nothing about sculpture." Gilpin took a large quantity of photographs here, some of which became the first she had published. Her photograph of the Cloister at the San Diego Exposition became her first prize-winning photograph. She won a monthly competition that was sponsored by American Photography magazine in May 1916.
What interested Gilpin about architecture and sculpture was the way light interacted with the three-dimensional forms. Beginning in 1916, Gilpin lived with Brenda Putnam, a sculptor who was living, sculpting, and teaching in New York City at the time. Their time as roommates was the beginning of what would become a lifelong friendship for Gilpin and Putnam, who supported each other's work and discussed art often. Gilpin studied sculpture with Putnam, and would often photograph her works. The two artists stayed in close contact even after Gilpin left New York for Colorado and New Mexico.
When Gilpin decided she wanted to seriously study photography, her mentor Gertrude Käsebier advised her to attend the Clarence White School in New York City. She enrolled in a 28-week course in October 1916, and greatly expanded her photographic knowledge and skill. She deeply admired White, whom she later called "one of the greatest teachers I have ever known in any field". White believed that while taking a good photograph involved an investment in emotional feeling, a student could also be taught to take a good photograph. For White, being a good photographer was not something that was innate. White also did not separate the notion of art photography and commercial photography. At the Clarence White School, Gilpin learned about photographic processes and alternative printing methods, including platinum printing, a process she would work with throughout her career.
Gilpin spent the summer following her first school year at Clarence White School in Colorado Springs and then moved back to New York in the Fall of 1917. Shortly after, she contracted influenza and was unable to take photos for six months. She came under the care of Elizabeth Forster, a nurse, who became her lifelong friend and companion. When she was well again she began working and taking photos again but never went back to school, and her period of formal study of art came to an end.