Laura Adams Armer (January 12, 1874 – March 16, 1963) was an American artist and writer. In 1932, her novel ''

Waterless Mountain ''Waterless Mountain'' is a novel by Laura Adams Armer that was awarded the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1932. Plot Younger Brother, a Navajo Indian living in Arizona in the 1920s, wishes to follow in the f ...

'' won the

Newbery Medal The John Newbery Medal, frequently shortened to the Newbery, is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to the author of "the most distinguished cont ...

. She was also an early photographer in the

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Bay Area. An online facsimile of the entire text of Vol. 1 is posted on the Traditional Fine Arts Organization website ().

Biography

Laura May Adams was born in Sacramento, California, and relocated with her family to San Francisco before 1880. Her father was a carpenter and her mother a dressmaker. In 1893 she began her art studies at the California School of Design in the Mark Hopkins Institute and left in 1899 to open her own photographic studio in the Flood Building. She achieved rapid success as a portrait photographer, published her theories on composing studies for the camera, and exhibited with great acclaim at the: San Francisco Sketch Club (1900); California State Fair (1901–02); New York Camera Club (1901); Photographic Salons of San Francisco (1901-Second Prize; 1902–03); Starr King Fraternity in Oakland (1902); and San Francisco Art Association (1903). In February 1902 she sold her studio to Berkeley photographer

Adelaide Hanscom Adelaide Hanscom Leeson (25 November 1875 – 19 November 1931) was an early 20th-century artist and photographer who published some of the first books using photography to illustrate literary works. Life Early years Adelaide Marquand Hanscom ...

and traveled in the Southwest with her fiancée

Sidney Armer Sidney may refer to: People * Sidney (surname), English surname * Sidney (given name), including a list of people with the given name * Sidney (footballer, born 1972), full name Sidney da Silva Souza, Brazilian football defensive midfielder * Si ...

. The couple married that July and in 1903 moved to Berkeley for the birth of their son, Austin. The pace of her exhibitions accelerated with a display at the Oakland Art Fund of her bookplate designs and prints, which

Anne Brigman Anne Wardrope Brigman (née Nott; December 3, 1869 – February 8, 1950) was an American photographer and one of the original members of the Photo-Secession movement in America. Her most famous images were taken between 1900 and 1920 and depict ...

called "exquisite", and contributions to the American Photographic Salons in New York City and Washington, D.C. She returned from a trip to Tahiti in October 1905 and shortly thereafter her infant daughter died. She emerged from a short retirement in late 1906 and became an active exhibiting member of the Berkeley art colony. She also exhibited on the Monterey Peninsula and vacationed in Carmel with

. Laura won a silver medal at Seattle's

Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition The Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition, acronym AYP or AYPE, was a world's fair held in Seattle in 1909 publicizing the development of the Pacific Northwest. It was originally planned for 1907 to mark the 10th anniversary of the Klondike Go ...

in 1909 and began to experiment with color photography in her popular Berkeley studio. A turning point in her career came in 1919–20 when she began to document systematically the Hopi and Navajo of the Southwest, which resulted in numerous publications on their societies, art (especially sand paintings), and folklore, as well as hundreds of photographs and the film ''The Mountain Chant'' (1928). Armer's children's book ''

'' tells the story of a

Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest fe ...

boy called Younger Brother and was illustrated by both Armer and her husband. The book won the

in 1932. Another of her children's books, ''

The Forest Pool ''The Forest Pool'' is a 1938 picture book by Laura Adams Armer. The book was a recipient of a 1939 Caldecott Honor for its illustrations. References 1938 children's books American picture books Caldecott Honor-winning works {{chil ...

,'' was named a

Caldecott Honor Book The Randolph Caldecott Medal, frequently shortened to just the Caldecott, annually recognizes the preceding year's "most distinguished American picture book for children". It is awarded to the illustrator by the Association for Library Servi ...

in 1939.

Exhibitions

Illustration from Leaves from an Argonaut's note book

Elderly Chinese American Man with Queue b

Armer's photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown (c. 1900) are in the collection of the

California Historical Society The California Historical Society (CHS) is the official historical society of California. It was founded in 1871, by a group of prominent Californian intellectuals at Santa Clara University. It was officially designated as the Californian state h ...

of San Francisco. Her photos of the American Southwest are in the

Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology (formerly the Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology) is an anthropology museum located in Berkeley, California, on the University of California, Berkeley, campus. History Founded in 1901 under the pa ...

, Berkeley, and the

Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian is a museum devoted to Native American arts. It is located in Santa Fe, New Mexico and was founded in 1937 by Mary Cabot Wheelwright, who came from Boston, and Hastiin Klah, a Navajo singer and medic ...

Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , Spanish for 'Holy Faith'; tew, Oghá P'o'oge, Tewa for 'white shell water place'; tiw, Hulp'ó'ona, label= Northern Tiwa; nv, Yootó, Navajo for 'bead + water place') is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. The name “S ...

.Peter Palmquist, "Laura May (Adams) Armer (active 1899-1930's)"
in ''100 Years of California Photography by Women: 1850-1950''. Retrieved March 22, 2013.

Published works

* * * * * * *

References

External links

*

a 1900 essay by Armer, hosted by the Women in Photography Archive at

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and ...

.
Newbery Winner 1932
''The Newbery Companion''. Retrieved July 6, 2006.

article in Women Out West: Art on the Edge of America {{DEFAULTSORT:Armer, Laura Adams 1874 births 1963 deaths American children's writers American women children's writers American women film producers American women photographers Artists from Sacramento, California Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area Film producers from California History of the San Francisco Bay Area Newbery Medal winners Photographers from California Writers from Sacramento, California Writers from San Francisco Place of death missing