On April 11, 2026, The Block Museum of Art hosted the Diné in Focus Photography Collective for a conversation on photography, representation, ethics, and contemporary life across the Navajo Nation. The event was held alongside Teresa Montoya’s exhibition Tó Łitso (Yellow Water): Ten Years after the Gold King Mine Spill and featured Teresa Montoya (Diné), Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago; Shayla Blatchford, photographer and creator of the Anti-Uranium Mapping Project; Andrew Curley (Diné), Associate Professor of Geography, Development and Environment at the University of Arizona; and Majerle Lister (Diné), PhD Candidate at the University of Arizona.

Montoya opened by asking the audience to consider their assumptions about Indigenous representation: what makes an image Indigenous, Is it the subject, or the person behind the camera? Much of her own work centers on landscapes tied to her research on extractivism and environmental contamination across the Indigenous Southwest, and she spoke about the difficulty of photographing these places without falling back on “empty-frontier” nostalgia.

Curley described his path from documentary photography of fair trade coffee and cacao workers in the early 2000s to his current work photographing the Navajo Nation on film, often with vintage cameras. He was candid about the contradictions in his practice—selling landscape prints at Santa Fe Indian Market while also documenting urban Indigenous life, basketball rivalries between Hopi and Pinon, and the legacy of the railroad’s role in colonization.

Blatchford traced her practice back to a Canon AE-1 she was given at twenty, and to her family history: her mother was born on the Navajo Nation and adopted as an infant through the Indian Adoption Project. After earning her BFA in photojournalism and documentary photography from the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, she worked as an in-house photographer at a luxury clothing store, photographed Santa Fe Indian Market for Vogue, and in 2021 launched the Anti-Uranium Mapping Project, which combines photography, interviews, and mapping to document uranium mining’s ongoing impacts on Indigenous communities.

Lister focused on street and concert photography in Shiprock. He described his interest in capturing not “authentic Indigeneity” but “authentic Native livingness”—the Northern Navajo Parade, flea markets, mosh pits at local shows, and the DJs helping build a diverse music scene that brings Native and non-Native bands through the community.

Ethics and consent ran through the discussion. The artists talked about photographing family, ceremonies, and public spaces; about signaling to subjects before taking a photo and sending them copies afterward; about what they won’t post and what stays within families. They also discussed the long shadow of photographers whose images shaped outside expectations of Indigenous people, and pushed back on the idea that Native communities are frozen in the past.

The program was presented in partnership with the Gichigamiin Indigenous Nations Museum and supported by a grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Watch the full conversation below:

Teresa Montoya’s exhibition Tó Łitso (Yellow Water): Ten Years after the Gold King Mine Spill was on view at The Block Museum of Art during Spring 2026.

About the Artists

Teresa Montoya (Diné) is a photographer, social scientist, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her research and creative practice focus on contemporary problems of environmental governance in relation to historical legacies of land dispossession and resource extraction across the Indigenous Southwest. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Public Health, Anthropology Now, Cultural Anthropology, Journal for the Anthropology of North America, Ecology and Society, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Visual Anthropology Review, and Water International. She has curatorial experience in various institutions, including the Field Museum where she served as a guest curator for Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories. She is the founding member of Diné in Focus, a collective dedicated to Diné photojournalism through a Diné lens. Website: https://teresamontoya.squarespace.com/

Shayla Blatchford is a photographer and interdisciplinary artist whose work examines the intersections of land, memory, and environmental justice in the American Southwest. Her practice blends documentary photography, mapping, oral histories, and archival research to explore the complex histories of uranium mining and its lasting effects on Indigenous communities.  She is the creator of the Anti-Uranium Mapping Project, a long-term artistic and research initiative that uses visual storytelling and counter-mapping to challenge dominant narratives about land use, nuclear development, and environmental responsibility. Through this project, Blatchford creates spaces for community storytelling while connecting historical research with contemporary lived experiences.  Blatchford received her BFA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography from Santa Fe University of Art and Design. Her work has been supported by the Creative Capital Technology Grant and the Anonymous Was A Woman Environmental Arts Grant through the New York Foundation of the Arts.  Her photography and research have been presented through exhibitions, workshops, and educational programming, where she engages audiences in conversations about the role of art in shaping public understanding of environmental history and social change.

Andrew Curley (Diné) is an Associate Professor of Geography, Development and Environment at the University of Arizona.  His research explores how extractive industries produce a particular kind of colonizing relationship that expands social difference and creates new cultural understandings of resources within indigenous communities.  Building on ethnographic research, his publications speak to how Indigenous communities understand coal, energy, land, water, infrastructure, and development in an era of energy transition and climate change.  He earned his PhD in developmental sociology from Cornell University.

Majerle Lister is a Diné PhD Candidate at the University of Arizona, whose research interest ranges from Indigenous geography, Native American Studies, and Critical Agrarian Studies.  His research explores the development discourses and practices within the Former Bennett Freeze Area in Western Navajo Nation.  As a photographer, he is interested in capturing the mundane and candid aspects of Diné life.