"One of the most iconic images of the transition between traditional Pueblo life and the drumbeat of modern times was snapped by a young fellow delivering groceries here in 1954.

Lee Marmon was helping his father, Hank, run the Laguna Trading Post in the 1940s and '50s while he taught himself photography with a boxy Graflex Speed Graphic and a book on film developing.

He shot a lot of weddings on the weekends and grabbed his camera and ran whenever news happened — a car wreck on Route 66, Hollywood producer Mike Todd's plane crash in the Zuni Mountains.

And at the urging of his dad, who anticipated that the railroad, the paved highway and the worldly veterans returning from World War II would alter Pueblo life, Marmon took his camera along as he made his grocery deliveries to Laguna's elders.

Get their pictures, his dad told him, before they're gone.

So he asked his customers and the elders he spotted sunning on adobe walls whether he could make a portrait."

Get the Story:
Leslie Linthicum: Photographer Lee Marmon Sold His Archives to UNM To Preserve His Legacy, But He Kept His Most Iconic Image (The Albuquerque Journal 8/15)