Portrait of Gertrude Käsebier

Laura Gilpin was an American photographer who pioneered color photography in the mid-twentieth century, working primarily in the American Southwest and documenting Native American communities and landscapes. Her archive of platinum prints and Kodachrome transparencies, developed over a six-decade career, established a distinctive visual record of the region's geography and cultures. Gilpin's technical mastery of both black-and-white and color processes, combined with her sustained focus on a single geographic territory, positioned her work as foundational to American regional photography.