Toba Pato Tucker photographs and papers

Toba Pato Tucker refers to herself as "a contemporary American documentary portrait photographer" who "strives to record continuity and change in American culture for history and artistic purposes with a particular interest in Native American populations."

Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, Toba Pato married Robert Paul Tucker (Yale 1944) in 1956. They, and their daughter, Dena Suzanne Tucker, lived in West Hartford, Connecticut. After the marriage ended, Toba Pato Tucker returned to New York City.

Initially a self-taught amateur photographer, Tucker began her professional career after attending a workshop taught by Harold Feinstein in 1976. In her early work, she used a Pentax camera that exposed thirty-five millimeter film. In 1976, she bought a used Hasselblad camera that exposed 120 millimeter film. The following year her friend and mentor Toby Old helped her master the intricacies of the Hasselblad as well as how to develop black and white film and print fine art silver gelatin photographs. Although Tucker occasionally used other cameras, the Hasselblad was her primary camera for the remainder of her career. Primarily a black and white photographer, Tucker occasionally used color negative film. From 1978 to 1980, she taught at the International Center of Photography in New York City.

Over her career, the subjects for her portraiture have chiefly come from Native American populations. These include members of the Onondaga Nation, Shinnecock Indian Nation, Navajo Nation, and Montaukett Indians. Tucker has also documented Native American artists from pueblos throughout the southwestern United States.

Tucker also created portraits of individuals from other communities and locales, including street portraits of pedestrians in New York City and Minneapolis, Minnesota; residents of Day Top Village, a drug rehabilitation program with facilities throughout New York State; the people of Heber Springs, Arkansas -- the rural town photographed decades earlier by Mike Disfarmer (1884-1959); and African American members of the First Baptist Church of Riverhead, New York. During her work with residents of Day Top Village and Heber Springs, Tucker taped oral history interviews with her portrait subjects.

In 2012, Tucker began concentrating on landscape photography, epitomized by a project to document the American West using the work of nineteenth century photographers as reference points.

In her commission work, Tucker created portraits of individuals, couples, and families. Other projects included portraits of family members, friends, and bodybuilders, as well as seascape and landscape photography.