Visualizing histories: Experiences of space and place in photographs by Greg Staats and Jeffrey Thomas

Abstract

Photographs by First Nations artists Jeffrey Thomas and Greg Staats re-view and re-vision colonial and postcolonial experience and place in Canada. The photographs presented in this paper challenge much colonial photography that depicts aboriginal peoples collectively as part of an ethnographic present engaged in traditional cultural activities or in modes of cultural assimilation. Images by Thomas and Staats are fragmentary depictions of individual aboriginal identity and experience of history in postcolonial contexts. Notably the artists' images lack the stereotypical signs of 'Indianness' that are prevalent in popular understanding of aboriginal identity and that stem from the aforementioned colonial imagery. It is argued that the artists' photographs do not represent a return of the colonial gaze documented in such historical images; rather, their work suggests alternative strategies of vision at play between First Nations artists and their audiences in Canada.