Introduction
Indigenous, aboriginal, and First Nation peoples have been the focus for Western photographers since the mid-19th century. They have often been the subjects of stereotypical and appropriating discourses, used to demonstrate and legitimize colonial and racialist policies. Photography, with its essentializing and intrusive capabilities, became both a symbol and an instrument of dispossession, literally ‘stealing the shadow’ by furnishing the means to remove its subjects' right and ability to determine their own history and representation.
It is for this reason that photography has become such a potent and critically important medium to many indigenous and aboriginal peoples, and its history contested. However, new research is revealing histories of indigenous imaging—documentary, family, and artistic—buried beneath Western and colonial imaging.
At the same time an energetic and critical contemporary practice has evolved in which works of photographic art address key and interrelated issues of sovereignty, identity, cultural heritage, and land rights, as well as the destructive histories of, and social problems experienced by, groups now minorities in their own land. The following contributions on Australia, Aotearoa/ New Zealand, and North America demonstrate the range of approaches and concerns which constitute a dynamic photography too often ignored by dominant models of photographic history and practice.
Australia
The genesis of a public Indigenous photography in Australia is unknown, although work from many Indigenous amateurs who photographed their families and communities from the early 20th century onwards is being rediscovered. The first notable Indigenous professional photographer was Mervyn Bishop, who from the early 1960s covered important social, political, and historical events. From the early 1980s onwards, the work of individual Indigenous photographers, such as Tracey Moffatt, Kevin Gilbert, Ricky Maynard, Michael Riley, and Brenda L. Croft, was increasingly recognized, and exhibited internationally. However, Australian Indigenous photography was first shown collectively in an arts context in a landmark exhibition in Sydney, Aboriginal and Islander Photographers, in 1986. Articulated through a range of styles, Indigenous photographic practice had developed both as a medium for political expression and as a response to colonial imaging and appropriation.
Michael Riley (Wiradjuri nation), for example, has produced monochrome documentary photography as well as film, video, and conceptual work. Like other Indigenous photographers, he has endeavoured to capture the strength, grace, and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, in contrast to the bleak stereotypes of photojournalism; while addressing the sacrifices of Indigenous people, the ravages of introduced disease, and anger at two centuries of dispossession and dislocation. In contrast to Riley's evocations of damaged land and damaged souls, Destiny Deacon (Erub/Ku Ku/Mer nations) draws on the influences of popular Anglo culture in an increasingly urban Indigenous existence, making satirical series, co-opting kitsch memorabilia, family members, and friends in fantastical scenarios such as It shows no fear (1999) and No need looking (1999). In a more documentary idiom, Rick Maynard's evocative black-and-white portraits of his community, The Moonbird People (1985), depict important continuing cultural traditions for Tasmanian Aboriginal people, while No more than what you see (1993) portrays the harsh life of Indigenous prisoners in South Australia's jails. Darren Siwes's (Ngalkban) portraits reveal his training as a painter. His own image is inserted into distinctive photographs of Adelaide's urban milieux, landmarks, and cultural landscapes, resulting, as Christine Nicholls has put it, in a kind of ghostly memento mori that is simultaneously an epiphanic, contemporary Indigenous presence.
Since 2000, new photo-media artists have come to notice. Christian Thompson (Bidjara/Pitjara) is a young artist-curator, whose people are from Queensland. Based in Melbourne since 1999, he rapidly emerged as an important figure in new media art and technology. Jason Hampton's (Gurindji/Ngalarkan people) sci-fi renderings of country, Indigenous physical and cultural (ill) health were included in con Verge: Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art (2002). Jennifer Fraser (Bundjalaung) has curated web galleries and exhibitions as well as showing her work nationally, commenting on issues such as the Republic and DNA testing. Like Thompson, Dianne Jones (Balardung) draws on international Conceptual art, incorporating imagery beyond the stereotypes of Indigenous people and their visual culture. Jones's playful approach is evident in Shearing the Rams (2001), a digital reworking of a much-loved Australian icon, Tom Roberts's 1890 painting of pastoral labour and reward.
While photographers like Moffatt and Gordon Bennett, also known internationally, demand that their work be seen as contemporary, not ‘Indigenous’ art, others consider the duality of their work fundamental. Indigenous photographers work to overcome memories of centuries of mistreatment, and an atavistic distrust of that most abusive of colonial devices, the camera. Formerly reduced (literally) to the picture postcard, Indigenous peoples have come back into focus through the print and digital media. All are familiar with, if not fluent in, global visual and written languages, articulating this in their work, using new media technology not to replace traditional tools, but as an addition to their modern equipment of cameras and computers. As bell hooks has written, ‘Such is the power of the photograph, of the image, that it can give back and take away, that it can bind.’
New Zealand
Maori use of photography can be traced back to 1853 when the daughters of Dicky Barrett and Rawinia Waikaiua of Ngati Te Whiti, Caroline and Sarah, had their daguerreotype taken by the itinerant photographer Lawson Insey. This family study of the two girls in their matching Victorian dresses is the first known photograph of New Zealand Maori.
Initially photography focused on important personages, chiefs, and political leaders, or on those who could afford the guinea fee. While Maori images rapidly became a staple of the tourist, commercial, and scientific market, they were also quickly adapted and adopted by Maori culture as taonga (cultural treasures) that retained the mana (power, prestige) and mauri (life force) of the individual portrayed. Early acceptance and use of the camera by Maori was generally proportionate to the level of contact with Europeans, with a resulting large percentage of the earliest commercial studios with successful reputations for Maori portraits being established in Auckland. Amongst these were John Nicholas Crombie (fl. 1854-73), who photographed twelve prominent Maori chiefs who attended the Kohimarama Conference in 1860. His portrait of a defiant-looking Tomika Te Mutu, displayed at the International London Exhibition in 1862, was one of the earliest Maori photographs to be seen in Britain and widely marketed. The Pulman Studio (fl. 1869-1900) also took sensitive portraits of important personages such as the Maori King Tawhiao, and the American Photographic Company (fl. 1872-5) made numerous images in a style reminiscent of the American West, where the photographer had trained.
There is little documentation on these early portraits, but the ledgers of Frank Denton in Wanganui show that by the 1880s Maori were actively commissioning photographs for personal and ceremonial use. William Partington (fl. 1880s-1928), also of Wanganui, and Samuel Carnell (fl. 1873-85) of Napier, also had a significant number of Maori clients, and such photographers, who were seen to have a positive rapport with Maori communities, were engaged to record special events and social gatherings, and to copy and reproduce existing prints. This increased commissioning of photographs related to the practice of seeing the image as a spiritual bridge to absent individuals, and as a consequence led to the practice of putting photographs on the walls of meeting houses, either in addition to or as a substitute for traditional ancestral carving, and placing photographs around the coffin during tangihangi (funerals).
During the early 20th century there was a backlash by some Maori against the inappropriate usage and commercialization of Maori culture in photography, such as the taking and selling of unauthorized photographs of tangihangi, and the printing of chiefs' portraits on souvenir tea towels or biscuit tins, where they contravened tapu (taboo). Concurrently, other groups began to exploit the photograph for their own advantage, such as the selling of postcards within Whakarewarewa to supplement the village's income. Individuals such as Guide Makereti used the camera for her public role of raising awareness of Maori issues and self-determination, while at the same time adapting versions of these public portraits for her personal albums. Both groups were concerned about the manner in which Maori were represented by photography, and attempts were made to restrict the unauthorized use of cultural images as early as 1893, when Queen Wi Rangitehu registered Robert S. Thompson's—her husband's—photographs of the graves of Maori warriors fallen in the Taranaki Land Wars under the Fine Art Copyright Act of 1877, to prevent their inappropriate reproduction.
From the 1900s hand-held cameras for personal use enabled Maori to take photographs of themselves by themselves for their own purposes. These pictures are now invaluable in showing the way Maori culture changed and adapted to colonial influence and the assimilation policies of the 1910s to 1950s, especially as there are few other local visual records of this time. For their own purposes, Maori also increasingly worked in collaboration with outsiders to record and preserve their culture. In 1923, for example, Apirana Ngata sponsored the government tourist photographer and Dominion Museum ethnographer James McDonald to record what was feared to be a disappearing way of life. McDonald also worked with the Maori ethnographer Te Rangi Hiroa and Elsdon Best to produce important visual and sound recordings of traditional life, including the first cinematographic films of Maori. The photojournalist Robert Hutchins and the documentary photographer Ans Westra (b. 1936) recorded with dignity the realities of Maori life in conditions of economic and political inequality, helping to bring about re-evaluation of the government's housing policies.
The first Maori professional photographer was Ramai Hayward (b. Ramai Te Miha and aka Patricia Miller) of Ngai Tahu and Ngati Kahungunu descent, who worked in Devonport between 1938 and 1946 before embarking on an international career as a film-maker with her husband. By the 1970s, Maori professionals were increasingly focusing on Maori issues and displaying the images both within and outside Maori environments to raise awareness of cultural issues: for example, the coverage by the freelance film-maker and photographer John Miller of Ngapuhi descent of pivotal events such as the 1981 protests against the Springboks' rugby tour.
Contemporary Maori artists increasingly use the camera to explore and (re-)present their cultural identity within their Maori community, as well as investigating the Maori heritage within the wider New Zealand and international community. Artists such as Fiona Pardington, Lisa Reihana, and Ross T. Smith use the camera for individual, cultural, and political expression, appropriating anthropological, documentary, and art techniques to create an ongoing visual dialogue between artist and audience.
North America
The history of Native photography has had a late start, though not because of an unwillingness to embrace the latest technology. In the 19th century it was doubtless more logical to pick up the latest firearm from the battlefield than it was to salvage state-of-the-art camera equipment left by a fleeing photographer. Negotiating the violent foreign occupation of Native lands left little time to contemplate the processes of photography. While emigrant Americans were honing their photographic techniques, recording pristine landscapes for settlers, the First Nations of North America were fighting for survival and focusing their creative energies on staying alive.
By the end of the 19th century, just as people generally were picking up the camera, so too were native communities. The image in the viewfinder was familiar, of family and friends. One of the earliest Native photographers, Richard Throssel (Cree/Scottish/Crow; 1882-1933), officially photographed community members throughout the Crow territory from 1902 to 1912. The images by Jennie Ross Cobb (Aniyunwiya; 1882-1958) while at the Cherokee Seminary in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, provide evidence of both Native class structures and Native modernity. She photographed her Aniyunwiya world as she saw it, in stark contrast to the images by non-Native photographers that reinforced their own conceptions/constructions of Native America. By 1906, photography was being taught to students at the Carlisle Indian School in one of the finest and best-equipped photographic studios in the state of Pennsylvania. Twenty years later, Horace Poolaw (Kiowa; 1906-84) embarked on a professional career photographing community members and events that was to last for half a century.
It is essential today that young Native photographers have Native resources with which to work, and know that there is a difference in imaging when the photographer is from within. The present author and her colleagues have the honoured position of belonging to the first generation of exhibiting fine-art Native photographers. That honour also imposes the responsibility, through their photographic approach, of fostering the philosophical values of their communities.
National and international exhibitions of contemporary Native lens-based art flourished throughout the 1980s and 1990s, establishing the canon that exists today. The landmark exhibition Native Nations, held in 1998 at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, was split ideologically into two sections and distributed physically over two separate floors. The upper floor featured the familiar vintage images of North American Indians by non-Native photographers judging, capitalizing on, and scientifically documenting the ‘other’. The lower floor presented not-so-familiar images by ten Native photographers. These addressed social and political issues of sovereignty, land rights, cultural affirmation, and family. This grouping only partially represented a canon that includes many other art photographers, as well as vigorous communities of Native photojournalists.
There is now an abundance of Indigenous/First Nation photographers assuming the responsibilities of imaging: composing, digitizing, developing, presenting images of family and community; evoking philosophy, politics, personal dreams and visions, and constructing visual sovereignty through photographic imagery; Native thought made visual.
— Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie
Bibliography
- Poolaw, L., War Bonnets, Tin Lizzies, and Patent Leather Pumps: Kiowa Culture in Transition, 1925-1955 (1990).
- Albright, P., Crow Indian Photographer: The Work of Richard Throssel (1997).
- Tsinhnahjinnie, H. J., “‘When is a Photograph Worth a Thousand Words?’”, in J. Alison (ed.), Native Nations: Journeys in American Photography (1998)
