University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
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Fugitive Poses "To photograph people
is to violate them, byseeing them as they never see
themselves..." "The notion that a photograph is worth a thousand words is untrue in any language.... Photographs are specious representations, the treacheries of racialism, neither cultural evidence nor the shadows of lost traditions." "Native American Indians sensed the solace and mythic chance of their memories in narratives, not cameras. The tribes posed in silence at the obscure borders of the camera; fugitive poses that were secured in museums." "How would these photographers of Indianness explain the distinctions between public and private simulations of the other? ... Photographers abused the tribal sense of privacy, and then either sold or distributed the simulations to various agencies. How should we now respond to the photographs that violated the privacy of the subjects?" |
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Yuma
Indian, Arizona
E. A. Bonine |
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"What can we see in the photographic representations of the racial other that is not dominance? ... The true stories of pictures are in the eyes, not in the costumes or simulations of culture; the eyes are the tacit presence, the costumes are the racial enactments of the other. Clothes, masks, and decorations are changeable, and borrowed clothes are prosaic simulations, neither cultural codes nor representations of conversion stories. The eyes that meet in the camera are the assurance of narratives and presence." |
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Quanah
Parker
C. M. Bell, 1880s |
Quanah
Parker
C. M. Bell, 1880s |
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"Quanah Parker, for instance, is pictured in both tribal clothes and in a morning coat with an umbrella, pocket watch chain and derby. In one photograph he is supported by a rustic wall, in the other by a classical stucco simulation. He is posed near the same ornate column in both photographs.... Parker was Comanche, a wise crossblood leader at the turn of the last century who defended the use of peyote as a religious freedom. The narratives of his religious inspiration, his crossblood uncertainties, are not obvious in either of the photographs. His hair is braided in both pictures but the poses seem to be the causal representations of then and now, tradition and transition, or variations on the nostalgic themes of savagism of civilization. His eyes, not the costumes, are the narrratives..." |
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Intro | Illusion of the Image Michael Katakis | Learning from the Elders Robert Preucel order from Publications |