About Earl Waggoner

Earl Chester Waggoner (1916-1990) was born in Oakland CA, on March 19, 1916. The son of a railroad man, Lonnie Waggoner, and his wife, Edith May Quick of Ben Hur, CA, Earl spent the first years of his life in Oakland, CA. As a young man, Earl contracted tuberculosis and left the San Francisco Bay area for the drier climate of Prescott, AZ where he attended high school. It was in Arizona that Earl's curiosity about and love of the Navajo developed.

As an adult he returned to San Francisco to follow a career in banking, but he never forgot the Navajo. He studied anthropology at the University of California extension in San Francisco and in the spring and fall, he would return to Arizona and Monument Valley to photograph the beauty of the land and the simplicity of the people. His photographs won numerous awards in San Francisco and Chicago photographic exhibitions.His award winning photographs have been published by Crocker Bank in San Francisco and by Northland Publishing of Flagstaff, AZ in their book about the Navajo people, "The Four Corners".

These photographs are archived at The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. They have also been displayed at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, AZ and have decorated the offices of the Navajo Nation in Washington DC