John K. Hillers
- Also known as
- Jack Hillers
- J. K. Hillers
- Born
- Hanover, Germany
- Died
- Washington, District of Columbia, United States
- Active in
- New Mexico, United States
- Arizona, United States
- Biography
Photographer. A German immigrant, Hillers found employment as a boatman on John Wesley Powell's 1871 survey of the Colorado River. By first assisting and then substituting for the expedition's official photographer, Hillers progressed quickly, showing a natural aptitude for the medium. The next year he was made chief photographer for the survey.
From 1879–1880, Hillers accompanied a Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) survey into New Mexico and Arizona, where he photographed Canyon de Chelly, the Rio Grande pueblos, and Zuni. His portraits of the Indians and their homes and villages tell much about their social structure and lifestyle.
During his long career, Hillers made some twenty thousand negatives for the U.S. Geological Survey and the BAE; many are works of high artistic and technical merit, satisfying both as pictorial views and historical documents.
References
Darrah, William Culp. "Bedman, Fennemore, Hillers, Dellenbaugh, Johnson and Hattan: Photographers and Other Members of the Expedition." Utah Historical Quarterly 16–17 (1948–49): 491–503.Debooy, H. T. "Pioneer Photographers." New Mexico Magazine 37 (February 1959): 22–23.
Coke. Photography in New Mexico.
Ballinger and Rubinstein. Visitors to Arizona, 1846–1980, pp. 94–95.
Charles Eldredge, Julie Schimmel, and William H. Truettner Art in New Mexico, 1900–1945: Paths to Taos and Santa Fe (Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1986)