Face Pullers: Photographing Native Canadians 1871-1939

by Brock V. Silversides

The Face Pullers documents a particularly rich period in the history of Canadian photography. These photographs of First nations people - spanning the period 1871 to 1939 - provide not only a fascinating glimpse of a vanished world, but also illuminate the ways in which myths and misunderstandings about Native people have influenced, from the earliest days, the images produced by non-Native photographers. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many Canadian photographers - both amateur and professional - took pictures of Native people for documentary and commercial purposes. The Indians initially regarded photographic equipment with curiosity, suspicion, and fear, and upon viewing the final product, labeled the camera "the face puller." The photographs were in great demand among the white population, and while they often presented idealized views of First Nations people, they nevertheless managed to portray some authentic aspects of the Native experience. The evocative images in this collection provide a perspective of these individuals and their lives impossible to convey with mere words, and bear witness to the strength and resilience of what many believed at the time to be a dying race. The Face Pullers provides an unusual record of the myth-making surrounding Native people, and valuable insights into the history of Indian/white relations in Canada.

184 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 1995

Reviews

[Sylvester (Taking a break in 2023) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of photos. It is important to remember that most of the photographs of natives at this time were made for money - in consequence, most were staged, posed, and very stiff. They had to fit the stereotype in order to be marketable. Not a lot of smiles here, but then, why should there be? The people were not necessarily thrilled to be photographed, some became very resistant, which only seems natural. In spite of everything, their faces speak. This is history - the history of the photographer and his motives and values just as much as his subjects. The photos of the residential schools were the most disturbing to me - the children with their haircuts and uniforms all in neat little rows...absolutely haunting.

[J Haeske · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, full of touching, problematic/sad, fascinating, beautiful and enlightening photos. The subtitle 'photographing Native Canadians' is slightly misleading however, as pretty much all of the people depicted in here lived in the prairie provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, so the rest of the country is excluded. For everybody interested in the (photographic portrayal of) First Nations people in Western Canada this is indispensible.