INDIGENOUS REPRESENTATION

INDIGENOUS IREPRESENTATION

Early established standards of depicting indigenous peoples and territories were contrived by a white agenda to be sold to white consumers, positioning Native Americans as a stereotype of racialized iconography. These turn-of-the-century portraits skewed towards romanticism over reality, presenting highly stylized interpretations of seemingly primitive beings existing outside modernity. This portfolio includes works that juxtapose early codified representations that othered and homogenized native groups with contemporary works by indigenous artists that speak to the lingering effects of a colonial past. Themes addressed include agency within photographic staging, the built environment of the fashioned “American Indian”, loss of personal identity, colonialism, countermapping and the reclaiming of heritage outside a Western context.

D.F. Barry (American, 1854-1934)

Cabinet cards were very popular in portrait photography during the end of the 19th century until the beginning of the 20th century. Images of the American West were a commodity and sold well to Eastern Americans and Europeans. This commodification extended to its subjects, including Native Americans. The photographer behind this cabinet bard, D.F. Barry, made a name for himself

photographing notable figures from the Lakota community.

Accession Number: 2017.15.14

Title: Chief Rain in the Face

Date: 1888

Medium: Cabinet card

Rights: Public domain

KEYWORDS

cabinet cards; popular culture; consumption; commodity; Lakota; staging; photography; Native American portraits; the curated image.

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Edward Sheriff Curtis (American, 1868-1952)

Curtis spent over thirty years living among many indigenous communities, to create The North American Indian, a twenty-volume set of pictorial photography with text in addition to twenty portfolios of photogravures. The project intended to offer a documentary/ethnographic view of Native American life to serve as record of tribes in North America and their way of life.

Accession Number: 2013.31

Title: Shield Ogala

Date: 1907

Medium: Photogravure print

Rights: Public domain

KEYWORDS

documentary; ethnographic study; American West; The North American Indian; photogravures; Native American portraits; idealized portraits.

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Jeffrey Gibson (American, b. 1972)

Gibson’s deer hide paintings fuse modern artistic practices with the cultural beliefs of indigenous communities, resulting in works that intentionally begin outside western tradition. His use of counter materials are a departure and rupture with the history of painting and comment on issues faced by indigenous communities, including anxieties associated with assimilation and stereotypes of primitive practices and material culture.

Accession Number: 2013.34.75

Title: Constellation No. 11

Date: 2012

Medium: Acrylic on deer hide-covered wood panel

Rights: Image courtesy of the artist and Marc Straus LLC, New York and Samson, Boston

KEYWORDS

Native American; materiality; counterculture; deer hide; assimilation; material culture; contemporary indigenous art; LGBTQ.

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Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds (American, b. 1954)

Edgar Heap of Birds creates art that weaponizes words to directly confront American viewers as complicit with their colonial past and its violent legacy. With a purpose of resetting history, his work seeks truth in the indigenous experience. The pedestrian signs seen here evoke the Trail of Tears, the passage of forced relocations of Southeastern tribes to land West of the Mississippi under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, resulting in over 15,000 deaths.

Accession Number: 2017.15.14

Title: Trail of Tears

Date: 2005

Medium: Four aluminum panels

Rights: © Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort

KEYWORDS

Native American; Trail of Tears; postcolonial; agency; activist; Indian Removal Act; genocide; death; contemporary indigenous art; text; word art.

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Gertrude Käsebier (American, 1852-1934)

This photograph of a Sioux man, Takes Enemy, is from a series of portraits Käsebier created for Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. Inspired by childhood interactions with the Lakota Sioux peoples in Colorado, she insisted on capturing the sitters’ individualities in a paired down fashion that clashed with the conventional stoic and overly posed representations of Native Americans at the time. While more natural, the portrait speaks to the unspoken contracts that exist between photographers and subjects.

Accession Number: 2013.13

Title: The Red Man

Date: 1898

Medium: Photogravure print

Rights: Public domain

KEYWORDS

Native American portraits; Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show; Lakota; Sioux; studio photography; agency.

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William J. Lenny & William L. Sawyer (American)

Nineteenth century images of Native Americans did not exclusively depict subjects in ceremonial costume. Some studios, such as that of Lenny & Sawyer, photographed Native Americans in both citizen and native dress. This was not necessarily a progressive commentary by the artists, rather it responded to the demand for both types of images in a market driven by white interest in the indigenous “other”. In doing so, they inevitably captured the details of the acculturation process.

Accession Number: 2017.15.17

Title: Sinbow and Wife

Date: Unknown

Medium: Cabinet card

Rights: Public domain

KEYWORDS

studio photography; acculturation; tribal merging; transition; frontier photography; Native American portraits; indigenous cultures; cabinet cards.

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OBJECT FILE

Frank Rinehart (American, 1861-1928)

Traditionally in expositions, Native Americans were depicted and consumed as dated curiosities. Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska marketed Native Americans’ image through the lens of Wild West entertainment. These photographs reinforced (and helped shape) the stereotype that indigenous groups were primitive and existed outside modernity. This idea is put into contrast between the subject’s ceremonial garb and the painted studio backdrop.

Accession Number: 2017.15.18

Title: Black Man Arapahos

Date: 1898

Medium: Platinum print

Rights: Public domain

KEYWORDS

commercial portraits; Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition; Wild West entertainment; Native American portraits; ; the constructed image.

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Jaune Quick-To-See Smith (American, b. 1940)

Smith takes the essence of a countermap and turns it into an activist minded artistic weapon. The use of maps in her work began in1992 in opposition to Columbus’ Quincentennial, the nascent moment of western colonialization. She uses icons as images—like the US Map—for their instant recognition, deviating from expected representations in order to critically engage the viewer in a postcolonial debate on the ownership of land and space.