They wanted to keep him safe.
With newly legislated racial desegregation, their Raleigh, NC, public school system had become a place of daily violence. Chip Thomas’ parents sought a way to keep their 13-year-old out of the fray.
They identified two alternatives: a military academy and “the hippie school,” a Quaker-run alternative boarding school. The choice would prove life-changing.
With only 24 students, the innovative Quaker middle school offered a lot more than academic education. When one of their teachers demonstrated black-and-white photography and darkroom skills, Chip was instantly hooked. By 8th grade, he had his own camera and started pursuing his life passion.
Later, the demands of medical school necessitated a break, but art was never far from his heart. The end of his residency coincided with the birth of Hip-Hop, and impelled him to New York City to soak up both the music and the rising medium of public street art.
Chip, whose artist moniker is Jetsonorama, ultimately found himself providing medical care on the Navajo Nation. When his next-door neighbor invited him to share his darkroom, that inner creative spark reignited. Gaining trust and access to subjects historically represented only through stereotypes, he found a way to document his adopted community authentically in his spare time.
In 2009, during a 3-month sabbatical to Brazil, he stumbled into a vibrant street art community that welcomed him with open arms. He likens it now to an artist residency. In this context, he says he experienced an epiphany – a path to meld his two artistic passions: black-and-white documentary photography and public street art. Using wheat paste, he could display a large photograph on a wall, like wallpaper, that would eventually break down and degrade.
Returning to the reservation, he snuck out one night and wheat-pasted a black-and-white portrait he’d made of the Navajo Code Talkers – Native American heroes of World War II who used their Diné language to outwit the Japanese military intelligence.
Affixing the large-format photograph onto a dilapidated structure on the side of the road, he didn’t think anyone would care. But four days later, he returned in the daylight to document his installation. He found four men hard at work and asked if they minded him photographing the wall. They said, “Sure, all the tourists keep stopping to photograph it; feel free.”
He learned they were repairing the shack, repurposing it to sell art and jewelry, since it had suddenly become a tourist destination. When they discovered that he was the artist, their only request was that he put another one up on the south side, too.
It was a tipping point, a moment when Chip witnessed the greater impact his work could have. Since then, his art has broadened to draw an ever-widening audience. He has expanded to create installations that include vintage photographs and lost history, tackling weighty, long-ignored topics such as Native enslavement.
Ask him why he does this painstaking and demanding work on top of a medical career, and he doesn’t hesitate. “Representation.” He is driven to show people of color in more dynamic, authentic ways than they are typically celebrated publicly, most often as sports or entertainment figures. He wants to create a sense of agency for people who have mostly been erased from history.
His stint as a physician at Inscription House on the Navajo Reservation required a 4-year commitment. He retired in 2023 after 36 years. I’m looking forward to seeing where his art will take him in this next chapter.
Learn more about the KDI Photography Helpers Project here.
Update:
In 2026, MacArthur Foundation awarded Chip the “Genius” grant.
You can hear his interview with Adam Burke from NPR on Weekend Edition Saturday: How a retired Navajo Nation doctor earned a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant for public art
Follow Chip’s impactful work HERE.
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Kristen Dacey Iwai of KDI Photography is a full-time professional portrait photographer based in Flagstaff, Arizona with decades of experience. Making portraits of families, pregnancy, newborns, babies, children, and high school seniors in her downtown studio and on location, she serves clients from Flagstaff, Sedona, Tuba City, Winslow, Payson, Page, Williams, Prescott, Mesa, Scottsdale, Phoenix, Arizona
