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Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai
200 pages, Hardcover
Published December 30, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 3, 2026
This is a beautiful and eloquent tribute to Cara Romero’s ongoing photography project.
Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum showed her work last summer. I was blown away when I walked into the galleries. The large format photographs are stunning. The carefully staged shots have also been meticulously processed to yield intensely saturated color prints. Romero starts with a concept but then works with models she knows well to develop the idea into an image that blends the subject’s tribal identity(ies) and personal approach to being Indigenous today with her own goals.
Two photos illustrate some of Romero’s themes. One of my favorites shows two women in Native dress standing at night in front of a lit-up oil refinery located in the San Francisco area. I drive by it regularly, and have always been enticed after dark by the lights illuminating dozens of tanks and seeming mile of pipes. The two Native American women are standing just outside the chain link fence that surrounds to plant. In the photo one woman has hands painted with metallic gold and gold face paint; the other has similar accents in black. They represent to impact of gold mining and oil drilling on California’s environment. Another photo shot in the desert poses several friends, dressed in their own accurate Native dress, in front of a stack of old televisions that display images of Native Americans from the Hollywood westerns of my youth—every one in standard issue Plains Indian dress.
Many of her more recent photographs are more experimental, shot underwater or in the studio. Some play on myth (Coyote) or unexpected roles (woman boxer, astronaut). She often constructs shots that ask us to consider women’s lives and environmental racism. But each one demands a reaction to people looking straight at you, insisting that you look at them carefully, as an individuals with complex identities.
I’m going to try to embed a link to some photographs. If it doesn’t work, go to the Cara Romero Photography website to see the images. Note that the gallery exhibits work by her husband Diego Romero and others, so navigate to her work. But check out her husband’s work as well. He shares her dedication to examining life between traditional and modern Native worlds, but he works in clay and prints. The Crocker exhibited many of his works as well. He combines a playful, traditional motif+superhero imagery with no-holds-barred depictions of historical and current political, religious and environmental events with devastating impacts on Native Americans.
I also want to stress what a work of art the monograph itself is. Several of Romero’s most striking photos are very long panoramic shots of things like young indigenous boys in the desert, wind farms in the desert, and in a scene called The Last Indian Market that plays off the last supper image, in a Southwest dining room. In the book these are each a five segment foldout page. Every photo is intense and detailed. The essays, and comments from Romero herself, are printed on slightly smaller sized vellum-like paper and interspersed among the pages on which the photos are reproduced. The forward is by poet Joy Harjo. It’s not cheap, but I had to have it. I visited the exhibit at least four times. If you’re lucky you can borrow the book through your library.
https://www.cararomero.com/gallery/ca...
Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum showed her work last summer. I was blown away when I walked into the galleries. The large format photographs are stunning. The carefully staged shots have also been meticulously processed to yield intensely saturated color prints. Romero starts with a concept but then works with models she knows well to develop the idea into an image that blends the subject’s tribal identity(ies) and personal approach to being Indigenous today with her own goals.
In pop culture we get excluded. We are segregated out of sci-fi, sub pop, and pop, so I am most interested in when they appear back together so fluidly. Visually speaking to other Native people, especially young people, and saying that the most interesting thing to examine is how we’re Indigenous against all odds. How does it come through time? And how has it arrived here?”
Two photos illustrate some of Romero’s themes. One of my favorites shows two women in Native dress standing at night in front of a lit-up oil refinery located in the San Francisco area. I drive by it regularly, and have always been enticed after dark by the lights illuminating dozens of tanks and seeming mile of pipes. The two Native American women are standing just outside the chain link fence that surrounds to plant. In the photo one woman has hands painted with metallic gold and gold face paint; the other has similar accents in black. They represent to impact of gold mining and oil drilling on California’s environment. Another photo shot in the desert poses several friends, dressed in their own accurate Native dress, in front of a stack of old televisions that display images of Native Americans from the Hollywood westerns of my youth—every one in standard issue Plains Indian dress.
Many of her more recent photographs are more experimental, shot underwater or in the studio. Some play on myth (Coyote) or unexpected roles (woman boxer, astronaut). She often constructs shots that ask us to consider women’s lives and environmental racism. But each one demands a reaction to people looking straight at you, insisting that you look at them carefully, as an individuals with complex identities.
I’m going to try to embed a link to some photographs. If it doesn’t work, go to the Cara Romero Photography website to see the images. Note that the gallery exhibits work by her husband Diego Romero and others, so navigate to her work. But check out her husband’s work as well. He shares her dedication to examining life between traditional and modern Native worlds, but he works in clay and prints. The Crocker exhibited many of his works as well. He combines a playful, traditional motif+superhero imagery with no-holds-barred depictions of historical and current political, religious and environmental events with devastating impacts on Native Americans.
I also want to stress what a work of art the monograph itself is. Several of Romero’s most striking photos are very long panoramic shots of things like young indigenous boys in the desert, wind farms in the desert, and in a scene called The Last Indian Market that plays off the last supper image, in a Southwest dining room. In the book these are each a five segment foldout page. Every photo is intense and detailed. The essays, and comments from Romero herself, are printed on slightly smaller sized vellum-like paper and interspersed among the pages on which the photos are reproduced. The forward is by poet Joy Harjo. It’s not cheap, but I had to have it. I visited the exhibit at least four times. If you’re lucky you can borrow the book through your library.
https://www.cararomero.com/gallery/ca...
February 10, 2026
This book is stunning! An immaculate reflection of the living artistry of current Native Peoples of the Southwestern United States (especially Southern California).
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews