Susanne Stone Page

Photographer - Gone From Our Sight

Susanne Stone Page died early in the morning of May 13, 2024 after a brief illness. In her last days she was surrounded at home by her family, many comforting dogs, music, and dear friends in much the same way she lived her life.
Susanne's 40-year career as a photographer began in the 60s working for United States Information Agency. An intrepid single mother of three, she had a good eye and a love of people. She traipsed across the eastern US, often with daughters in tow, capturing everything from country veterinarians to Chesapeake Bay watermen. An assignment to the Navajo Reservation in Arizona covering the opening of a community school changed her life. For several years she returned to Rough Rock, deepening friendships, learning, and slowly taking pictures that became her first book- Song of the Earth Spirit (Friends of the Earth, McGraw Hill, Ballantine Books 1972).
In her own words she said: " I have tried to photograph people the way I feel that they see themselves, rather than the way an outsider might want to see them." This tender and honest approach helped to produce several more books — Hopi (Abrams, 1982) and Navajo (Abrams, 1995), on which she collaborated with her husband Jake Page, and A Celebration of Being, a collection of photographs of Hopi and Navajo people collected over 20 years that came from an exhibit that traveled from the Peabody Museum in Salem, MA to the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, NM and to the Sundance Institute in Utah. Susanne greatly appreciated the culture and arts of indigenous people. She and Jake also penned Field Guide to Southwest Indian Arts and Crafts.
Besides her books, Susanne's photographs appeared in National Geographic, Smithsonian, Marie Claire, Native Peoples, Mother Jones, Washingtonian Magazine, Nature Conservancy, People Magazine, and many other publications.
Susanne had a profound and active love of the natural world. She dug a pond at every house she lived in and filled it with plants and fish, welcoming all the creatures that appeared. She made it her business to learn every bird, butterfly and wildflower around her. She knew the stars and all about minerals and crystals. In a family of creative makers, she remained the absolute queen well into her 80s with elaborate self-designed knit shawls, sweaters, and socks. She walked in beauty.
Her family includes daughters Lindsey Truitt (Alan Kirk), Sally Truitt, and Kendall Barrett (Randy Barrett); stepdaughters Dana Page, Elly Truitt, Brooke Page, and Lea Page; grandchildren Zack Barrett, Tyson Barrett, Caleb Barrett, Grace Barrett, Lily Hoffman, Charlotte Hoffman, Max Hoffman, Early Ferguson, Griffin Ferguson (in spirit) Kenny Page-Brooks, Christy Ross and Brook Halvorson; and great-granddaughter Bernadette Garhart. They will be celebrating Susanne's life with friends on May 25.
Susanne lived in a world where spirits are alive and those of people that she loved were around, her parents, her sister Sally, Jake, her grandson Griffin, and many dear friends, and also others, showing themselves in the beauty of the natural world. In her last days, her family and close friends felt her powerful spirit beginning to fill the world around us with storms and beautiful clouds, eagles, catbirds and crows. It seemed like a slow-motion swirling changeover from her vibrant life force to an added brightness in the world around us. She will be missed forever and there is no question that the world will shimmer with the addition of her free spirit.