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Winning or Losing the West: The Photographic Act

University of British Columbia, Canada

The visual public record of the early West represents a site of national, continental, hemispheric, and global configurations of territory, power, and imagination. The early photograph reproduces the contradictory encounters between industry, settlers, and Indigenous communities as a particular future is envisioned and contested. The transformative value of a photograph was quickly recognized for nation building and soon served a political purpose as its uses expanded from surveying lands to promoting population growth and tourism and to artistic expression. The early uses on the frontier, however, created a secondary history: an alteric and alternative history of Indigenous Peoples through an oral storytelling with a perspective of difference in assimilation, disidentification, and resistance. Transcultural photography, however, is never neutral as participants come from different worlds to participate in a contested exchange. This article looks at photographic encounters between Red Cloud, Mathew Brady, and Alexander Gardener as they enact a mediation in international relations.

Key Words: photography • Native Americans • Indigenous • West • nation • technology • transcultural • mediation • frontier • Red Cloud • collecting • wampum • mnemonic • Smithsonian • colonialism

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