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

A vast archive of photographs of the American West chronicled American expansion and the subordination of many Native peoples. Many of these images either recorded the
vanishing Indian
or idealized the
civilized
native. But most of these works, produced by male photographers, obscure a wide range of intricate stories about Anglo-Indian relations in a period when intensified restrictions of Native Americans’ mobility and economy coincided with the rise of photography as a hobby and profession, as well as unprecedented opportunities for the
new woman
who was seeking to escape traditional gender constrictions. In Trading Gazes, these histories intersect in the stories of four unconventional women photographers and their subjects, providing readers with rich insights into a network of complex relationships. The essays in Trading Gazes offer historical and biographical contexts for their subjects, showing how each woman used photography in her relations of exchange with the people with whom she lived and worked. The women are: Jane Gay, who documented the allotment of land to the Nez Perce; Kate Cory, who made her home with the Hopi; Grace Nicholson, who worked with the Karuk and other northern California tribes; and Mary Schaffer, who traveled among the Stoney and Metis of Alberta, Canada. The book combines new historical information about turn-of-the-century North America with an unprecedented focus on women photographers in the U.S. and Canadian wests. In addition, the authors discuss how photographs can help us to understand the difficulties of recovering erased tribal pasts.