Cara Romero

(American | Chemehuevi, born 1977)

Cara Romero (Chemehuevi) is a contemporary photographer who blends fine art and editorial photography. Disillusioned by portrayals of Native Americans as bygone, Romero realized during university that making photographs could do more than anthropology did in words. “When we as Native people explore new artistic tools and techniques, such as photography, we indigenize those media.”

An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero was raised between contrasting settings: the rural Chemehuevi reservation in the Mojave Desert, California, and the urban sprawl of Houston, Texas. Romero’s identity informs her photography. Her art practice is also shaped by years of study and an instinctual approach to representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and lived experiences from a Native American female perspective. She states that "It is definitely a goal of mine to create thoughtful content that makes people think of pre-conceived notions of Native America, that challenges those perceptions, that creates multiple narratives, that all comes from a place of empowerment and celebration—a celebration of resistance." She lives and works between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation in California.