American Indian Culture and Research Journal

INTRODUCTION In the very near future-if it has not already happened while this journal was in press-the governor and the tribal council of the Pueblo of Zuni will formally request that museums and archives holding photographic images of Zuni religious ceremonies place restrictions on access to these images by scholars and commercial users. This position ultimately has its origins in the well-documented objections that some community members had to the making of these images in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and is paralleled by similar requests from other Indian communities. In this article, I do not intend to speak on behalf of the present-day Zuni religious leaders from whom this request originates. Rather, my intention is to discuss the double challenge of photography of Zuni religious ceremonies. First, I will discuss how photography in religious contexts was a challenge to nineteenth-century Zuni community standards with no straightforward solution.