Time Amongst the People: Photographs by Chip Thomas

On display from May 18 - June 5, 2007

Opening reception Friday, May 18, 6:00-9:00 PM

10% of print sales will be donated to Tohdenasshai Shelter Home for battered women and Youth Empowerment Services, charitable organizations which benefit the Navajo community.

Artist's Statement

A native of North Carolina, I moved to the Navajo nation (in northern Arizona) in 1987 to work as an Indian Health Service doctor. I had a four-year obligation to the National Health Service Corps and continue to work at the small, rural clinic where I began twenty years ago.

During this time I taught myself black and white photography. My time on the reservation has been intensely satisfying while yielding a diversity of rewarding experiences not all of which were on the reservation. For example, through a series of unlikely events I was chosen in 1992 to be the physician for a team of five cyclists (including myself) who set a Guinness World Record for cycling 12,000 miles from Africa's northernmost point (Bizerte, Tunisia) to the southernmost point (Cape Aghulas, South Africa). We covered this distance in nine and a half months.

Memorable experiences on the reservation include a young mother giving birth in the back seat of my vehicle as a friend and I drove her to the closest hospital some fifty miles away in Tuba City and spending five days and nights with a traditional family of three as they moved about 250 sheep and goats from the winter sheep camp to the summer sheep camp. We hiked about forty miles through beautiful, red-rock canyon country.

Working in the Indian Health Service has given me the opportunity to experience synchronicity between my political beliefs and my work in that I'm part of a team of healthcare providers who work in a system that offers high quality, universal access to all comers regardless of income. Working with the Navajo people has afforded me the unique opportunity to witness a culture in transition, to appreciate simple joys and to have the satisfaction of feeling that my work makes a difference. For this, I am eternally grateful.