The Mesa of Tâaaiyalana or Thunder Mountain

(20.4 cm x 15 cm). Photograph by Adam Clark Vroman Thunder Mountain Looking across the Zuni village toward The Mesa of Tâaaiyalana or Thunder Mountain, to which the Zuni retreated after attack on by Coronado in 1540. Vroman ca.1898. Photographed at direction of Anthropologist Frederick W. Hodge. Between 1895 and 1904, Adam Clark Vroman photographed the landscape and native peoples of the American Southwest. He photographed the Hopis, Zunis, and Pueblos, among other tribes. His portraits of Native Americans humanize, rather than romanticize, his subjects. The process he used most frequently was the platinotype or platinum print, known for its non-reflective surface, rich detail, broad tonal range and permanence. The platinum process was widely used in the United States and Europe from 1880 through the 1930s, when the cost of platinum became prohibitive and the silver-based processes gained prominence. Vroman moved to Pasadena, California in 1892. He soon opened a book, stationery, and photo-supply shop there in November of 1894. He traveled through southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico on seven separate trips from 1895 to 1904 to document the area's landscape, Indians, and Indian communities. Vroman was employed as a photographer by the Bureau of American Ethnology, (a research unit of the Smithsonian Institution) for two separate trips to the Southwest, the former involving a climb to the Enchanted Mesa in central New Mexico to prove the existence of Indian habitation and the latter a documentation of Southwestern pueblos and cliff dwellings.