2020 marked the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower in Massachusetts, bringing the Pilgrims to the New World. But the New World was not empty, and they were not alone. What would eventually be called America was home to many groups of Indigenous Americans, whose history and perspectives have often been overshadowed, or downplayed, starting with those who came from across the sea.
But with the anniversary also came an idea. Sarah Stacke, a photographer, author, and archival researcher and Brian Adams, an Iñupiaq editorial and commercial photographer based in Anchorage, Alaska saw the date as a purpose to create a digital library of Indigenous photography. “We began developing a photography project that looked at the evolution of Indigenous American identity and representation. It was named “The 400 Years Project” and it included a digital library of Indigenous American photographers from the 19th century to the present,” says Sarah Stacke. “In Light and Shadow is an expansion of that work.”
The book includes Indigenous photographers from North and South America and Hawai‘i from the 19th century to the present day. When choosing the artists to include, Stacke and Adams considered the Indigenous society or nation of the artist, geography, and generation. While commitment to photography was a given, being a professional photographer was not. This results in a very wide array of work, from both amateurs and professionals, ranging from family photographs and portraits, to documentary work and ethnographies, to fine art and multimedia pieces.
“Brian has worked with many of the contemporary photographers through Indigenous Photograph and he led the selection process for the contemporary photographers. For the historical photographers, I started by compiling a list of photographers who had, through research prior to ours, been noted,” Stacke explains. “Seeking to add names and Indigenous-led photo collectives and publications, such as yearbooks, to this list I consulted Indigenous communities and networks, historical societies, museums, and government and university archives. Some people came to us with photographers, like the grandniece of Ella Mad Plume Yellow Wolf. Magalí Druscovich was the Latin American Coordinator for the book, and she helped us research Indigenous photographers working in Latin America.”
Each of the 80 photographers included in the book is given a biographical summary, that also highlights the relationship between the photographs and their makers. For many of these early photographers, this book is their first publication outside of their local community. The texts alongside the images also help to put these photographers in their proper places in the history of the medium, where Indigenous voices have too often been left out.
The book seems even more important today than when the project began in 2020. With the current political climate in the United States, the histories of minority groups are again being rewritten or erased in favor of the perspective of others. “In Light and Shadow itself is a form of resistance to erasure. The images and their makers demonstrate that Indigenous people have been making photographs for their own purposes and on their own terms since the dawn of the medium. These images have always existed, but they’ve been excluded from the mainstream narrative of photography’s history,” says Brian Adams. “For too long, the dominant story has been about outsiders documenting Indigenous people, often in ways that are extractive. In Light and Shadow challenges that assumption by showing that Indigenous people have been behind the camera since the earliest days of photography running studios, working as photojournalists, documenting their families and communities.”
In Light and Shadowis published by Black Dog & Leventhal, an imprint of Workman Running Press Group, Hachette Book Group and available for $40.
Cover image: Mamo Eusebio and apprentices sit by Naboba Lagoon, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, 2014. © Amado Villafaña Chaparro
