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Women photographers have been exploring the historical archive in their artworks in order to better understand American history. Three of these artists include: 1) Wendy Red Star, whose research has rediscovered the whitewashed histories of Native peoples; 2) Kathleen Clark, who holds leaders accountable by connecting them to omitted atrocities; and 3) Carrie Mae Weems, whose artwork recontextualizes the past in order to better understand the present. Through varying art practices revising the historical archive, these contemporary artists examine the American allegory and its dissemination through photographs in order to illuminate the social and political structures within the United States.

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Wendy Red Star (b. 1981) is a Native artist of the Apsáalooke (Crow) tribe. Her artwork confronts flawed understandings of Indigenous peoples. While she works in a cross-disciplinary approach, photography has been a consistent part of her methodology. In many of her projects, Red Star uses historical photographs to liberate Native voices from the white gaze. Such examples can be seen in her series 1880 Crow Peace Delegation (2014) and Indian Congress (2021).

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Archival photographs constitute a place in which we can continuously engage with important cultural memory work, which helps us reread the actual making of the past and therefore reconfigure different historical narratives concerning the stories that make up history, race, rights and recognition: four vital stations in our understanding of humanity that remind us of the power relationships between the ‘observer’ and the ‘observed.'

Mark Sealy

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"How Photographs Can Tell Lies," Gwinnett County Public Library.

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Throughout her long career, Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953) has explored a variety of subjects ranging from family to memory to iconography. Her work reflects on the ways in which media disseminates stereotypes and she uses materials considered traditional, such as ceramics, fabric, and glass. As a diligent and thoughtful researcher, her creations push the audience to reconsider their conceptions of American history. The two most well-known bodies of work reassessing the past from her extensive oeuvre are From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried and Blues and Pinks.

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Carrie Mae Weems, You Became a Scientific Profile, 1995-96.

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From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995-96)

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From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995-96)

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Between 1995 and 1996, Weems created From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, a series containing thirty-three appropriated portraits that have been circularly-cropped, tinted red, and placed behind glass etched with words and phrases. She presents her succession of images in chronological order, with pictures beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending in the late-1960s.

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Carrie Mae Weems, & A Photographic Subject, 1995-96.

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Across the frames she has etched You Became a Scientific Profile and the phrase & A Photographic Subject, delineating the original use of the pictures while at the same time humanizing the women featured.

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(Left) Joseph T. Zealy, Delia, Profile, 1850. (Right) Joseph T. Zealy, Drana, Frontal, 1850.

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These daguerreotypes of enslaved men and women made by Joseph T. Zealy in the 1850s. Originally commissioned by Harvard University anthropologist Louis Agassiz, the images were used as a facet of scientific racism and offered as “proof” of Black inferiority. In her appropriation of this work, Weems highlights the ways photography has been used to typologize and criminalize.

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Throughout her career, Kathleen Clark (b. 1968) has created artwork imbued with concepts of social justice, history, and the home. Her most recent work, The White House China, combines archival photographs of dismissed historical moments with the ostentatious dinnerware of its corresponding president.

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"Decolonizing Photography: A Conversation With Wendy Red Star," Aperture.

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Challenging mainstream representations of Native Americans, Wendy Red Star photographs her Crow culture, on her own terms.

An elderly Native American man wears a headdress,stoically looking at the camera. A lone boy, also in a headdress, sits atop a horse, gazing across the vast plains. These images, taken by Edward Curtis, can describe most representations of Native Americans. Silent. Historic. A "noble savage" long erased from American social thought. Even contemporary imagery renders Native Americans as historic caricatures: in mainstream culture, they appear most commonly in the form of mascots or sexualized costumes.

But the subjects of these images are not silent.

Native American activists and artists have always recognized this disconnect between reality and perception; they survived generations of federal policies meant to eradicate their populations and their culture. Yet whites were simultaneously interested in documenting Native cultures for their own entertainment. Edward Curtis, a photographer known for his prolific documentation of Native Americans, created over 40,000 images of Native American life. These images are thought of as a glimpse into the past; they did not necessarily represent Native Americans as they were, but how whites wanted them to be remembered. They craved the imagery and a romanticized American past, but not the Indian himself.

In response to the widespread erasure of their subjectivity in popular images, an increasing number of indigenous artists are pushing back, and working to change the face of Native representation. They are portraying themselves and their communities, showing how they want to be seen and heard. Wendy Red Star, a Crow photographer based in Portland, Oregon, is one such artist. Red Star's work is humorous, surreal, and often abrasive, yet deeply rooted in a celebration for Crow life. Red Star's work responds, on her own terms, to these misrepresentations of Native Americans. I spoke with Wendy Red Star about representation, decolonization, and working in a genre that was used to define-and thus oppress-Native Americans for generations.
Abaki Beck: I'm Blackfeet and when I think of my family, one of the first things I think of is humor and laughing. Always laughing at family events, even funerals. Humor, it seems, is certainly an aspect of your work, particularly in your series Crow Clowns and White Squaw. There's a huge rift in how Indians are perceived by outsiders-particularly through noble, stoic images like those by Edward Curtis-and how we perceive ourselves. Can you talk about the role humor plays in your work?
Wendy Red Star: I think what you said is similar to the experiences I've had. I come from a humorous background, not just my Crow side, but my Irish side as well. I've always seen things through this ironic lens. I'm always laughing.

In my own Crow community, we have a whole policing system that uses teasing. Any time a tribal member is getting egotistical, there is a cousin who will notice it, and their job in the community is to make fun of you and bring you down a couple notches. If you are sick, their purpose is to come and joke with you. So it's very natural for me.

Humor is healing to me. Like you mentioned with laughing at funerals, everybody is so sad at that moment, to have a little bit of laughter is healing. To have that element in my work is quite Native, or Crow, and I'm glad that it comes through. It's universal. People can connect with the work that way. Then they can be open to talking about race.
Beck: How do you think the photography of Edward Curtis and other historical images of Native Americans impact people today?
Red Star: This country was founded on the eradication of Native people. We were also, paradoxically, used for tourism to promote the expansion of the West. Really what it all boils down to is humanity. I am always trying to show this in my work. We are human beings. For some reason, Native people are represented as eradicated, like in Edward Curtis's The Vanishing Race (1904) project. It's worked pretty well. I think people are surprised when they find a Native person because in the consciousness of America it's like we don't exist. We are these mythical creatures.

The conqueror has set up an image of what Native people are. I always think of John Trudell and how he talks about the whole concept of The Indian as fiction, made up when the white people came. It's true. We've lost our individuality as different nations. We were stereotyped into one thing.

I'm currently doing a residency at the Denver Art Museum, but I am showing in the Native Galleries. I am happy that the Native Galleries exist and that the curators there see the need to have a contemporary Native voice there. But I'm not in the contemporary art gallery itself, which is where I want to be.
Beck: There seems to be a dissonance between the arbitrariness of "Native Galleries" and the need, as you say, to recognize Native cultures and art in major institutions. How do you think Native work should be presented in museums?
Red Star: It is important for curators of Native American art in museums to work directly with Native communities on how to represent the material culture in their collections. Museums like the Denver Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Tacoma Art Museum, are working towards this initiative to highlight Native perspectives and shape the context of their collections. In terms of contemporary art curators and institutions, artists such as myself need to be included in the contemporary art dialogue, whether this is through exhibitions, public education, or conferences.
Beck: Do you make your work to empower Native people and reclaim our narratives, or to educate non-Natives?
Red Star: I really try to talk about Crow culture, because that's what I know best. I do a lot of research-based work and I think that education is important and the Native perspective hasn't been shared at all. It's a fresh story and it's not pigeonholed. A lot of people will say, "Well, that's just Native history." No, that's everybody's history who lives on this continent. It's about decolonizing the way people are seeing things.
Beck: Do you see your work as political?
Red Star: As a brown person, as a brown artist, your work is political. Whether you like it or not. Even if you are doing abstract painting, as soon as someone finds out you're brown they think, "This is about racism." The first time I came across this was when I was in undergrad and I was erecting teepees around campus. I had discovered that Bozeman, Montana was Crow territory. I wanted everybody to know that this was Crow territory. I didn't even think of it as political. I just thought, this is true. It wasn't until years later that I realized they are saying it's political because it's against the colonial standard. I don't aim to do political work, but it becomes political because it's talking outside the colonial framework.
Beck: Who are your influences in terms of finding a space for your own voice and representation in photography?
Red Star: I look toward a wide range of artists and photographers for inspiration and influence. For aesthetics I enjoy the work of Erik Kessels, Rashid Rana, Joachim Schmid, and Matt Lipps. Regarding representation and politics, I engage with the works of Shirin Neshat, Carrie Mae Weems, and Catherine Opie.
Beck: Have you observed changes in how Native Americans are represented in mainstream culture since you began working as a photographer?
Red Star: Right now there are a handful of us Native artists who are starting to be included in the mainstream, which is exciting. We are starting to be included in exhibitions that are not all Native artists and not Native-themed. But we still have a long way to go.

My career has been mostly museum-based, but what's interesting is that I'm usually showing in the Native galleries with the Native curators. It's great to be in the museum, but I am slowly starting to see my work included with other non-Native identity-based artists. But no matter how much I'd like to be shown in the contemporary section of the museum, often the most exciting stuff for me is on the Native floor.

I don't know how long it's going to take, how many cycles, before Native artists show in major exhibitions. When will the Native artists have their chance?
Beck: The recent events at Standing Rock have garnered national attention to Native American issues in a way that no movement has in years. What do you think is the role of Native photographers and artists in shaping this movement going forward?
Red Star: I believe the role of Native photographers and artists in shaping this movement forward is to continue to draw attention and awareness. Social media is an excellent platform to expose the injustices that have plagued Native America. These platforms allow the Native voice to be heard on a grand scale. I find this to be very exciting as both a Native person and an artist.

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Decolonizing Photography: A Conversation With Wendy Red Star

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Challenging mainstream representations of Native Americans, Wendy Red Star photographs her Crow culture, on her own terms. An elderly Native American man wears a headdress,stoically looking at the camera. A lone boy, also in a headdress, sits atop a horse, gazing across the vast plains.

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When we’re looking at these images, we’re looking at the ways in which Anglo-America – white America – saw itself in relationship to the black subject. I wanted to intervene in that by giving a voice to a subject that historically has had no voice.

Carrie Mae Weems

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"Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen, Lili'uokalani," 1898.

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Liliʻuokalani - Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen (2021, e-artnow) - libgen.li

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Aiming to correct certain historical omissions, I began this project in the spring of 2016 to explore the iconography and incongruity of an America established through violent conquest yet framed by elegant theory and language. A country once perceived as a beacon for democracy has at its root the constant struggle for social justice. Embedded in a patriotic narrative, the rise and economic glory of the United States was fueled by the eradication of indigenous people, the enslavement of Africans and the exploitation of natural resources. The White House was no exception to this opportunism.

Kathleen Clark

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Kathleen Clark, William McKinley, President from 1897-1901, the Dethroning of Queen Lili’uokalani and Annexation of Hawaii, 2020.

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President William McKinley’s bread plate has dark blue and gold patterns, spattered with delicate pink roses that surround a black-and-white portrait of Hawaiian Queen Lydia Kamakaeha Kaolamalii Lili’uokalani. Her photograph was made at Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in January of 1887 by Stanisław Julian Ignacy Ostroróg, better known as Walery. The Grover Cleveland administration, along with thirteen American businessmen, staged a coup d’état and took control of Honolulu in January of 1893. In deposing the queen, capitalists seized 1.8 million acres for an oligarchy of white planters.

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Stanisław Julian Ignacy Ostroróg [Walery], 1887 – Princess Liliuokalani of Hawaii, 1887.

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Newly-elected William McKinley had previously signed an annexation treaty for Hawaii in 1897, although it was temporarily stopped through petitions of Queen Lili’uokalani and Native Hawaiian citizens. With the onset of the Spanish-American war and the hopes of gaining economic influence through “open” door foreign policy, Hawaii became a valuable asset for naval installations. McKinley signed the “Newlands Resolution” into law on July 7, 1898 and appointed Sanford Dole of the Dole Fruit Company as governor of the territory. In doing so, white plantation owners extracted resources through cheap imported labor.

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"Unladylike2020: The First and Last Queen of Hawai‘i," PBS.

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Queen Lili‘uokalani - The First and Last Queen of Hawai‘i | Unladylike2020 | American Masters | PBS

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Kathleen Clark, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President from 1933-1945, Japanese American Internment, 2020.

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The White House China: Franklin D. Roosevelt

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The White House China: Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Clark’s chosen dinnerware for Franklin Delano Roosevelt is an oyster plate decorated by a simple blue bar with gold stars and with the Great Seal of the United States at its top. Beneath this patriotic symbol rests a blue-tinted photograph of the Relocation Center for Japanese-Americans at the Santa Anita Assembly Center in California.

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Clem Albers, A panoramic view of the Santa Anita assembly center where evacuees from this section await transfer to War Relocation Authority..., 1942.

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The image was made by Clem Albers for the Department of the Interior through the War Relocation Authority in April 1942. Immediately after the bombings of Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese frenzy escalated and spread throughout the United States. In February of 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, “giving the army the power, without warrants or indictments or hearings, to arrest every Japanese-American on the West Coast.” His authorization of the order, and the creation of the War Relocation Authority (WRA), sanctioned the imprisonment of more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans in various concentration camps within seven states. While many protested their captivity up to the Supreme Court, most would remain in detention for at least three years.

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"Why the US photographed its own WWII concentration camps," YouTube.

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Why the US photographed its own WWII concentration camps

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Charles Milton Bell, Apsáalooke Delegation, 1880.

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In March of 1880, six chiefs of the Apsáalooke tribe traveled to Washington, D.C. to negotiate the boundaries of their land. After five weeks and threats from President Rutherford B. Hayes, the Apsáalooke conceded twenty percent of their homeland representing 1.6 million acres to the United States government.

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Charles Milton Bell, (left) Peelatchiwaaxpáash (Medicine Crow [Raven]) and (right) Alaxchiiaahush (Plenty Coups), 1880.

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While in the capital city, the tribal leaders were photographed by Charles Milton Bell, each appearing like criminal mugshots or anthropological specimens. The images were originally made for the Bureau of Ethnology, an archive used to categorize individuals into types. Later, the images were used in various advertisements, from cigarette cards in the nineteenth-century to modern iced tea marketing.

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Wendy Red Star, Peelachiwaaxpáash / Medicine Crow (Raven), 2014.

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The photographs represent one of many tribal delegations and the Apsáalooke were constantly pressured into surrendering their land, declining from 38.5 million acres to just over 2 million acres. In order to dispel the notion of passivity to colonial domination, Red Star appropriates Bell’s work in 1880 Crow Peace Delegation.

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Wendy Red Star, Alaxchiiaahush / Many War Achievements / Plenty Coups, 2014.

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Like the redrawing of boundaries on a map, she amends the photographs using red pen. Through her diligent research and recorded testimonies, Red Star recovers the histories of the leaders’ regalia, achievements, and dignity.

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"Dorothea Lange's Censored Photographs of FDR's Japanese Concentration Camps," Anchor Editions.

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Dorothea Lange-well known for her FSA photographs like Migrant Mother-was hired by the U.S. government to make a photographic record of the "evacuation" and "relocation" of Japanese-Americans in 1942. She was eager to take the commission, despite being opposed to the effort, as she believed "a true record of the evacuation would be valuable in the future."

The military commanders that reviewed her work realized that Lange's contrary point of view was evident through her photographs, and seized them for the duration of World War II, even writing "Impounded" across some of the prints. The photos were quietly deposited into the National Archives, where they remained largely unseen until 2006.

I wrote more about the history of Lange's photos and President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 initiating the Japanese Internment in another post on the Anchor Editions Blog.

Below, I've selected some of Lange's photos from the National Archives-including the captions she wrote-pairing them with quotes from people who were imprisoned in the camps, as quoted in the excellent book, Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment.

I've also made a limited number of prints of her photos available for sale at Anchor Editions, and I'm donating 50% of the proceeds to two organizations fighting to protect immigrants: NILC and ACLU. Their fight seems especially important today given the current tide of anti-immigrant rhetoric, Muslim immigration bans, and the United States terminating DACA, which-if Congress does not pass the Dream Act-means 800,000 immigrants could lose their protected status.

This photo essay was originally published on December 7, 2016, the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. We've updated it this year, as the organizations we're supporting continue to need your help. This month, print sale proceeds going to the NILC will be matched dollar-for-dollar by other NILC donors, so the NILC will get 100% of the value of any prints you order in December!

At Manzanar and at the Santa Anita Assembly Center near Los Angeles, army engineers supervised manufacture of camouflage nets. Huge weavings of hemp, designed to fit over tanks and other large pieces of war matériel, they were constructed from cords that hung from giant stands; the workers usually wore masks to protect themselves from the hemp dust. The army claimed that they were volunteers but they were in fact coerced by camp administrators, who were receiving requisitions for large numbers of nets from the army. (One of the first strikes at the camps occurred when 800 Santa Anita camouflage-net workers sat down and refused to continue, complaining of too little food. They won some concessions.) At Manzanar other internees worked in a large agricultural project to grow and improve a plant, guayule, that could become a substitute for rubber. With rudimentary and often homemade equipment, chemists and horticulturalists hybridized guayule shrubs to obtain a substance of tensile strength with low production costs. These undertakings were illegal under the Geneva Convention, which forbade using prisoners of war in forced labor, and as a result only American citizens were usually employed so that the army could claim that these were not POWs.

- Linda Gordon, Impounded

The government charged 63 members and seven leaders of The Fair Play Committee with draft evasion and conspiracy to violate the law. The trial judge, Blake Kennedy, addressing the defendants as "you Jap boys," sentenced the members to three years imprisonment. The seven leaders were sentenced to four years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.

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Dorothea Lange's Censored Photographs of FDR's Japanese Concentration Camps - Anchor Editions

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The military seized her photographs, quietly depositing them in the National Archives, where they remained mostly unseen and unpublished until 2006.

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"Wendy Red Star: 1880 Crow Peace Delegation," Smarthistory.

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Wendy Red Star, 1880 Crow Peace Delegation

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It's our history. I can't tell you how much I have to repeat that. Like telling non-Native people, people who live in the U.S., this is their history. It's not segregated. You know, it didn't just happen to Native people. It's what made you, you, and your experience living here. So that's why [these] images are important.

Wendy Red Star

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Wendy Red Star’s most recent project is a site-specific artwork installed at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. Indian Congress is arranged in a narrow room resembling an assembly hall; tiered tables are adorned with an array of extracted photographs and the space is embellished with bunting flags.

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Wendy Red Star, Indian Congress (detail), 2021.

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The original portraits were made by Frank Rinehart during the Indian Congress that occurred alongside the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in 1898. The months-long event hosted five hundred attendants from 35 tribal nations, making it “the largest gathering of Native Americans of its time.” Yet, as Red Star makes clear, the portraits and surrounding event have a complex and sordid past.

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(Left) Frank Rinehart, White Swan (Crow/Absaroke), No. 815, 1898. (Right) Frank Rinehart, Sleeping Bear [Sicangu Lakota], No. 876, 1898.

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Initially established as a money-making venture, the representatives at the Indian Congress spent much of their time participating in contrived battles while also selling goods and wares to white visitors. At the conclusion of the event, Rinehart sold copies of his portraits as souvenirs to white Americans living on stolen land. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, expositions and world fairs were exploitative events motivated by racism and imperialism. Because of this, Red Star’s patriotic adornments can be interpreted as facetious pomp signifying the colonialist ambitions of these events.

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"Invisible History: Indian Congress," YouTube.

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Indian Congress - Invisible History 2014

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"Carrie Mae Weems: From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried," Getty Museum.

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Carrie Mae Weems on her series From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried

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"Carrie Mae Weems for MoMA 2000: Open Ends," The Museum of Modern Art.

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Carrie Mae Weems on From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995-1996) in an interview at the Museum of Modern Art in 2000.

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Carrie Mae Weems, Blues and Pinks 3, 2020.

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In one of her most recent bodies of work, Blues and Pinks, Weems investigates injustice, cultural memory, and the consequences of power. Each artwork is comprised of several images from past events in American history. In the multi-framed singular composition Blues and Pinks 3, Weems utilizes renowned images from activist photographer Charles Moore who captured the brutality inflicted upon activists in Birmingham in 1963.

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(Left) Charles Moore, Police dogs attack a demonstrator..., 1963. (Right) Charles Moore, Demonstrators huddled in a doorway seek shelter..., 1963.

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These anti-segregation protests were organized by Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and have come to be known as the “Children’s March” because many participants were students. She constructed this series in 2020 at a time when waves of nonviolent protests materialized in response to the police murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

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Carrie Mae Weems, Blues and Pinks 3 (detail), 2020.

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By using images more than fifty-seven years old to address current events, Weems collapses time, recontextualizes the photographs, and pushes her audience to identify the similarities between then and now. For instance, the young activists of 1963 were met with firehoses and police dogs during their demonstration while the 2020 protestors encountered similar tactics of suppression, like tear gas and rubber bullets.

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"Black Bodies, White Science" by Brian Wallis, Smithsonian American Art Museum.

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Black Bodies, White Science: Louis Agassiz's Slave Daguerreotypes by Brian Wallis

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Black Bodies, White Science: Louis Agassiz's Slave Daguerreotypes by Brian Wallis

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Black Bodies, White Science by Brian Wallis

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"Charles Moore: I Fight With My Camera," YouTube.

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"Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People," YouTube.

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Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (2014)