American photography came of age in the West during the 1860s and 1870s although these early photographers developed their techniques during the Civil War. More than 300 photographers would pass through Union lines during the Civil war, achieving little in the way of economic success. At war's end the West's spectacular beauty drew many of these photographers, armed with a belief that there was something close to a religious meaning in its wilderness. While some prospected for views, exploration and mapping of the unknown for government geological and mining surveys drew others carrying glass photographic plates on donkeys and in wagons. Nowhere, however, would photographers' new-found obsessions have greater impact than among the west's Native Americans.
When asked for his thoughts about cameras, Kenchori, an Amazonian Indian responded, "Our god Tscorenci was our father and created the sun, which is like a mirror. He sees us up on high and makes photographs of our reflections. When we die the photograph disappears. Many have been lost." Farther away and closer to home, yet from a similar perspective, Navajos called the early photographers "Shadow Catchers."
Aided by improvements in technology, in 1888 photographers exchanged photography's labor-intensive wet and dry glass plates for the Eastman Kodak box camera with film. The word Kodak was born, chosen by George Eastman because K was a "strong incisive sort of letter." Images of Native Americans also changed, from awkwardly posed images of social discomfort with the long exposures that glass plates demanded to candid photos and multiple takes of the same image. But from the perspectives of most Native Americans, the desire to avoid the camera's lens remained unchanged. Non-native photographers' early fascination with "hostile" warriors soon yielded to the allure of photographing Indian captives, obsessions in turn replaced by capturing a "vanishing way of life" of the American West's living icons.
The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 brought an influx of settlers and tourists into the West, amateurs whose photographs were colored more by assumptions than by realities. Almost simultaneously in 1869 the earliest exhibits of western landscapes by journalistic and landscape photographers appeared in New York City. Photography's revolutionary contribution, to capture motion and thereby isolate moments in time, exercised its greatest expression by documenting the western landscapes and indigenous inhabitants. Indeed, photographs were taken as evidence that the photographic encounter is one of negotiation, of collaboration in the representation: photographs do not lie. Yet, many Native Americans saw and continue to see the camera as a weapon, part of a process of photographic colonization, as invasive intrusions of private lives and religious ceremonies. Photography served the interests of those "taking" the image, not their subjects.
Despite their exploitative and frequently fabricated constructions, the prolific output of non-Indian photographers is frequently tapped by today's Native Americans as invaluable documents of historical representation. Furthermore, in the last few decades the photographic production of and commentary on Native Americans has moved into native hands. While non-Indians took up the camera to preserve the "vanishing" Indian, today's Native Americans take up the camera to celebrate the fact that they didn't. Much contemporary photography by Native Americans seeks to compensate for the previous imbalance of power between non-native photographers and their native subjects. And the differences produced are often profound. Native photographs have a sharp "presentness" that pays tribute to a personal presence, one which photography neither vilifies nor romanticizes. The stories these native photographs are telling differ vastly from those previously told, a new photography still exploring its potential. A sense of intimacy is pervasive, bridging the gap between photographer and subject. A new generation of native photographers is transforming photography of natives, while simultaneously photography itself is undergoing transformation from film to our new digital age.
Marilee Jantzer-White holds a Ph. D. in Native American Art History from UCLA. Her publications include articles on Plains Indian drawings and Pueblo artists. She currently instructs courses on Art History of the Southwest, Native American Art History, Feminist Art History and MesoAmerican Art History at Fort Lewis College.