University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
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by Michael Katakis "Like the state, the camera is never neutral." --John Tagg "For nearly two years I have been looking at these photographs and they have come to haunt me, not because of what I see, but by what I don't, and possibly can never, know. As I've stared into these faces, I have tried to get beyond what is obviously the photographer's directions to 'sit here' or 'look at me', 'turn to the light' or 'wear this', and I have failed. I have tried to scale the mountains of commerce and myth, of museum-speak and scholarship and Hollywood and the media, all of which have, to some degree, reduced these people's lives to commodity, and again I have failed. I cannot seem to get into their eyes or hearts...." "The portraits have come to tell me more about the photographers and the times they lived in than the subjects themselves." "As a society, we form our views and opinions from the words and photographs of others. That's what history is all about, but one must always ask who took the photographs, who wrote the words, and why. We must always ask who controls the recording of particular histories." |
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Chief Goes to War
(Sioux) "... I know well the limitations that early documentarians had ... They could not capture life moving, so they stopped it and then constructed a world in their studios and in the field that often used Native Americans as props in the photographer's presentation of what an 'Indian' is." |
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The
Potter
Edward S. Curtis, 1909 |
Hopi
Girls in Window
Edward S. Curtis, 1900 |
At
the Old Well at
Acoma
Edward S. Curtis, 1905 |
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"Photographs such as those taken in the field by Curtis [in the late 1800s] generated a new interest in the 'Noble Savage' among people in Eastern cities of the United States.... As museums and academics began studying Native American cultures, they moved to control the presentation of Indian cultures to the American public. Although these institutions suggested a degree of scholarly objectivity, it is clear they had their own agendas, often having to do with fund raising as much or more so than with education. They used the images of photographers like Curtis in their 'scientific' presentation of Indian cultures, but they also needed to push out people like Curtis in order to centralize their authority over the presentations and the research enterprise." |
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"...It must be remembered that when many academics finally went into the field the polite phrase "gathering of artifacts" was really the appropriation of personal property by the group with the most power. If one of these white scholars had done the same thing to their neighbor in Boston or New York, it would have been called looting or armed robbery." |
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Intro | Fugitive Poses Gerald Vizenor | Learning from the Elders Robert Preucel order from Publications |