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In the nineteenth-century United States, a Native American could walk into a photographer’s studio and leave with a portrait—but not necessarily with control over the image.

The camera had arrived during a period when the relationship between Native nations and the United States government was becoming increasingly unequal. Photography did not create that imbalance. But it became one of the ways the imbalance was recorded, circulated, and, sometimes, reinforced.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that during the 1850s and 1860s, white photographers moving west welcomed Native Americans into their studios. Many subjects were not paid, their names and tribal identities were frequently not recorded, and photographers sometimes dressed them with studio props. The result was more than an imperfect portrait. It could become an inaccurate historical record.

The problem was not simply that photographers made mistakes.

They were deciding what the public would see.

A studio photograph could remove a person from their community and place them against an invented background. Clothing, objects, posture, and setting could suggest an identity that belonged as much to the photographer’s expectations as to the person being photographed. In one Met portrait, Pawnee leader Sky Chief appears wearing a U.S. military coat and peace medal while holding a tomahawk-pipe, combining political allegiance, cultural identity, and symbolic objects into a carefully constructed image.

Photography could therefore make a complicated human being look simple.

Then the camera moved closer to the machinery of government. “505 words to go. A donation keeps you reading and supports our independence. Thank you!”

By Edge of Humanity Magazine