The Big Picture
Photographer David Noble ’57 has catalogued his own life — and the lives of others
BY JACQUELINE PRIMO LEMMON
David Noble ’57 sits in his home workroom in Santa Fe, surrounded by research books and books of his own — he has published 12 — as well as framed photos on the wall that include images he’s made at archaeological sites. Among the stacks around him are unpublished manuscripts and short stories he has written over the years, as well as pictures that document his journey from New England to Vietnam and across the American Southwest with his wife Ruth, and from undergraduate to Army counterintelligence officer to prolific photojournalist. Throughout his career, his works have been represented by galleries, libraries and museums across the country, including Yale University’s Beinecke Library and the National Museum of the American Indian.
An avid student of French at St. Paul’s, Noble earned a degree in the language at Yale University in 1961. A year later, he enlisted in the Army, and, assigned to a counterintelligence unit, was among the earliest military personnel sent to Pleiku, Vietnam. There, he helped launch a covert intelligence-gathering operation in the region’s Central Highlands, home to more than 30 French-speaking Indigenous tribes collectively referred to as Montagnards.
As Noble integrated into the community, he took photographs of the Montagnards that he says were “very often the first pictures they’d seen of themselves.” Among them are images of individuals going about daily family life, at traditional celebrations and events and in military uniform as they fought against the Viet Cong. Noble found a purpose in developing and printing these photos to give back as gifts, even as he was still on active duty.
Following his return to the U.S. and subsequent discharge in 1964, Noble knew he wanted to turn photography and writing into a profession but “kind of floated for quite a long time,” teaching French for a private school in Manhattan, participating in the anti-war movement and often covering protests for a small New York newspaper. In 1970, he went to the wrong address for an appointment and arrived at a building site where he found a crew of Mohawk Indian high-steel workers. He took their photos and shared the portraits with them just as he had with his subjects in Vietnam. The encounter led to friendships and a life spent learning as much as he could about American Indians and the archaeology of the Southwest.
“My wife and I, we got this idea to pull up stakes, get a van, [and] hit the road,” Noble says, and so they did, for six months in 1970 and ’71. His eyes glimmer as he describes living out of their secondhand Volkswagen bus with a camper stove and sleeping bags while visiting reservations in upstate New York and Canada, Ojibwe reservations in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and Northern Cheyenne and Crow reservations in Montana. On the Bad River Reservation in Wisconsin, the duo was invited by an Ojibwe couple to canoe alongside them and take photos as they harvested wild rice in the sloughs along Lake Superior.
Noble soon began working on an archaeological guidebook, “Ancient Ruins and Rock Art of the Southwest,” then went on to write or edit more books about Southwestern history and culture. During a more than 50-year career, he photographed hundreds of archaeological sites that included the Alibates Flint Quarries in Texas, the Sears Kay Ruins in Arizona, and 14th century Arroyo Hondo Pueblo archaeological excavations in New Mexico. Just four years ago, at the age of 81, he capped off a 30-year career as an archaeological guide and interpreter on rafting trips on the Colorado, Green and Yampa rivers.
In 2020, Noble’s memoir was published. “Saigon to Pleiku: A Counterintelligence Agent in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, 1962–1963,” features many of his photos and letters home.
Ever humble, Noble credits “coincidences” with determining many of his life’s twists and turns. He chuckles before reclassifying them as “coincidences that were meant to happen,” such as an early 1970s encounter at a Santa Fe gas station with noted Tewa Pueblo anthropologist and author Alfonso Ortiz, who became a mentor and friend and introduced the Nobles to the Pueblo people and culture.
Another coincidence? While Noble and his former SPS roommate lost touch for many years, they later reconnected. He’s a photographer in Santa Fe as well.