Archives 1986 ()

2 - 20 December 1986

11 - 30 November 1986

(James Manning)

(Greg Staats)

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Through the Lens Darkly
Photography and Indians have had a long and ironic relationship, more accurately, photographers and their Indian subjects have created more than just a photographic image. Early Canadian and American photographers often posed Native people in stereotypical roles or romanticised the image of Native people. This created thousands of still photographers that tell us both about the sentiments of the photographers as well as the tolerance of the Native subjects who put up with the cameras and the stereotypes.
Europeans and Euro-Canadians have long been fascinated by their image of Indians and Inuit. The image of Native people in Canada is really an invention of the great white imagination, resulting from centuries of racism, voyeurism, and religious intolerance, such images die hard. Few people have been affected by their image in the popular mind as much as the Native people of this land.
What is your image of the Native people of Canada? In a 1978 National public opinion survey conducted by the University of Calgary on the Canadians’ opinions towards Indians, the results showed that many stereotypes persist. The report concludes that Canadians view Indians as “lazy, lacking in motivation, factionalized, overly dependent upon government handouts, and facing serious problems with the use of alcohol”.
Colonial whites saw Indians through their own ethnocentric tunnel vision, jaded by cultural and religious inhibitions. Natives basically were seen as either barbarians in a savage world, or as pastoral innocents in a garden of Eden. Mixed with a residue of fear, the European fascination to describe North American Natives created mythic images that have become immortalized in art, literature, drama, movies, textbooks, television, sports logos, advertisements, and archival photography.
You must remember that whites have always measured Native people by European standards of civilized behaviour. Whites saw Indians with no King, no military, no art, no writing, no morals, no chance. The problem, which still exists in many cases, is that the whites just couldn’t assess what they saw. The federal government still excepts Native people to live up to Ottawa standards.
Photography, which began in 1839 with the invention of dageurrotypes, offered some hope for change, as you could see “Real Indians”. Artists, historians, philanthropists, and scholars began to photograph Indians, with the same vigor that painters such as Catlin and Kane had attempted earlier. One of the earliest photographs of an Indian from Canada was made around 1843, by David Octavis Hill in his calotype portrait of Rev. Peter Jones, “Kahkewaquonaby”, that first pose became a standard in the field of photography - The Noble Savage, tomahawk in hand, gazing into an uncertain future.
By the 1850’s the photographer replaced the painter as portrait artist. Many expeditions were organzied, lugging cumbersome cameras, portable darkrooms, and aspirations to capture the shadowy images of the vanishing race of Indians. Because exposure times were very slow ( up to several minutes), photographers were forces to document motionless Indians. The stiffness of their subjects contributed to an image of the emotionless Natives. Photography of Native people in the late 19th century combined conflicting motives of science, romaticism, paternalism, and commercialism. Indians as images of paradise last became popular. Thomas Edison’s first film in n1894 was a vignette called, “Sioux Ghost Dance” for which he charged patrons twenty five cents to see. At the same time that Indians were fighting for their very existence, Victorian parlours were graced with photographs of the noble savage, as if it were a trophy of white supremacy.
Novels featured Indian conflicts, plays echoed the tragedy of the vanishing Indian, world expositions exhibited Indians like zoos exhibit animals, wild west shows re-enacted grand battles. By 1911 over 200 films were made about Indians, viewed by over 6 million movie goers. Indian images made money.
Even Franz Boas, considered  a founder of Anthropology and northwest coast specialist. tried to capitalize on Indian photographs when he tried to sell 140 photos of Kwakiutl Indians to popular magazines.
Perhaps the most popular image maker, Edward Curtis (1868-1952), was also caught by the conflicting attraction of photographs of Indians, Curtis laboured passionately for nearly 30 years to produce over 40,000 photographs of Indians and Inuit from across the continent. Curtis was a self proclaimed saviour of the vanishing Indians, however he wanted to save his image of how Indians looked prior to contact.
Curtis, whose work received popular acclaim, went so far as to dress  his Indian subjects in wigs, props, re-created costumes, and pose his subjects in unfamiliar settings. He even retouched his negatives to eliminate all references of white influence. Were his 20 volumes of photographs artist’s fantasy or true documents of Indian life? Many people still violently argue to defend the Curtis legacy of romance and retouching because the photographs are so “beautiful”.
Just how well did Curtis understand his Indian subjects? Did he really see what was there, or did he already have his preconceived images in his camera? Curtis wanted to create, “an irrefutable record of a race doomed to extinction”, yet financial pressures and artistic ego forced Curtis to create a series of pucture shows and lectures billed as entertainment to raise money. This resulted in photo-dramas and a film script about Kwakiutl Indians called, “Land of the Head Hunters”, catering to the more exotic stereotypes. This may not have been unintentional as Curtis himself expressed much resentment toward the Kwakiutl: “It is scarcely exaggeration to say that no single, noble trait redeems the Kwakiutl character”. So, why did he photograph the Kwakiutl in such a majestic way?
In 1914, British Columbia photographer B.W. Leeson confessed in “Camera Craft” magazine that his photographic image - “The Passing of the Indian” - was a blatant attempt to capitalize on the financial success of such sentimental stereotypes.
Anthropologist photographers in the 1920-1950 period attempted to document the Native people producing the vast majority of such images in Canada. Anthropologists were more interested in comparative studies of facial types, clothing types and material culture. The results were often staged and static images of Indians, projecting an uncomfortable pose. A smiling Indian was rare. The photographs gave an impression of the stoic nature of the subjects, unfeeling, somewhat different. There is a distance between photographer and Native subject, at times a sense of intrusion on the community. The anthro-photographer was often an outsider, peeking over the cultural fence, stealing images.
The archival photographs often show the facts of the Indian people - their face, the clothing, their home, the work. What is missing is the sense of the individual. In historic photography, Indians and Inuits are often props in an anthropological story, not seen as characters in their own life.
-Richard Hill

21 October - 8 November 1986

2 - 20 September 1986

12 - 30 August 1986

22 July - 10 August 1986

This exhibition of hand-tinted and toned black and white photographs deals with the many connections between memory, preservation, decay, and mortality. The exhibition’s title describes those inert plateaus which are preserved on film and mirror the actual extension of time within the print. Here, an object’s deterioration has been captured and held still for our examination and contemplation.
By utilizing traditional still life motifs and common but often overlooked detritus and memorabilia, these prints can become intimate objects. Their detail, size and color treatment reflect this intimacy and allow the viewer o enter into the world within.     -David Morrish

10 - 29 June 1986

The title of the exhibition: Conversation Pieces”, is taken from a type of genre painting popular from the late 1600s to the mid 1800s. It generally depicted people in their home environment or in familiar surroundings. With the intention of photography and the development of easy-to-use equipment and materials this tradition was continued. I see my photographs working within these traditions-a contemporary version of the Conversation Piece.

20 May - 8 June 1986

On November 22, 1985, the text of the statement of the Universal House of Justice (elected governing body of the Baha’i International Community) ‘to the peoples of the world’ on the topic of peace was presented to the secretary general of the United Nations. Subsequent presentations are being made to all Heads of State of the World.
The statement, in addressing the notion that ‘disunity is a danger that the nations and peoples of the earth can no longer endure’ is challenging mankind to ‘recognize the oneness and wholeness of human relationships, and establish once and for all the machinery that can best incarnate this fundamental principle’ of unity.
PEACE DIRECTIVES evolved out of my reading of the statement and wishing to communicate visually those ideas which’…raise the context (peace) to the level of principle.
‘For, in essence, peace stems from an inner state supported by a spiritual and moral attitude, and it is chiefly in evoking this attitude that the possibility of enduring solutions can be found.’
I found this very exciting as it is calling for us to alter our way of thinking as human beings which is a profoundly new approach to the achievement of peace.
The captions are from the peace statement and other writings of the Baha’i Faith.
-Bruce Hanks

29 April - 18 May 1986

8 - 26 April 1986