Luck, Owen Craig, 1947-

Dates

• Existence: 1947    

Biography

Owen Luck is an American photographer known for his photography of Native American and First Nation Canadian life and history. In 1973, after serving two tours as a combat medic in Vietnam, Luck travelled to Pine Ridge, South Dakota to provide medical support during the occupation of Wounded Knee by the American Indian Movement (AIM). He also carried a camera and created an extensive record of the confrontation between AIM and the United States Marshals Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, and other law enforcement agencies. His account of that experience, "A Witness at Wounded Knee 1973," was published in The Princeton University Library Chronicle in 2006. In 1975 Luck documented the Menominee Warrior Society’s occupation of the abandoned Alexian Brothers Novitiate in Gresham, Wisconsin, near the Menominee Indian Reservation. Since 2004 he has worked among indigenous communities of the Pacific Northwest. Luck has donated photographs to Ogallala Lakota College in Pine Ridge, to the Haida Gwaii Museum in Skidegate, and to the Makah Museum in Neah Bay. Significant collections of his work are held by Princeton University Library and the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.