Trading Gazes: Euro-American Women Photographers and Native North Americans, 1880-1940

by Susan Bernardin, Melody Graulich, Lisa Macfarlane

The story of westering Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has been told most notably through photographs of American Indians. Unlike this vast archive, produced primarily by male photographers, which depicted American Indians as either vanishing or domesticated, the lesser-known images by the women featured in  Trading Gazes  provide new ways of seeing the intersecting histories of colonial expansion and indigenous resistance. Four unconventional women-Jane Gay, who documented land allotment to the Nez Perces; Kate Cory, an artist who lived for years in a Hopi community; Grace Nicholson, who purchased cultural items from the Karuk and other northern California tribes; and Mary Schaffer, who traveled among the Stoney and Métis of Alberta, Canada-used cameras to document their cross-cultural encounters. Trading Gazes  reconstructs the rich biographical and historical contexts explaining these women's presence in different Native communities of the North American West. Their photographs not only record the unprecedented opportunities available for Euro-American women eager to shed gender restrictions, but also reveal how women's newfound mobility depended on the increasing restrictions placed on Native Americans in this era. By tracing the complex, often unexpected relationships forged between these women, their cameras, and the Native subjects of their photographs,  Trading Gazes  offers a new focus for recovering women's histories in the West while bringing attention to the complicated legacies of these images for Native and non-Native viewers.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Art

244 pages, Paperback

First published February 27, 2003

Reviews

[I · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly so excellent, if you're considering reading this please do!

[Bea Alden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent illustrated study authored by Susan Bernardin, Melody Graulich, Lisa MacFarlane and Nicole Tonkovich, on the topic of "Euro-American Women Photographers and Native North Americans, 1880-1940."

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful read (and quite quick), but it would definitely help if you have a background in photography and/or US relations with American Indians.