Portraits Against Amnesia: archival recuperation in the work of Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie

Abstract

This article considers the work of contemporary photographer Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie (Taskigi/Diné). Part of the first generation of artists to popularize the field of contemporary Native American photography, her work engages with issues of identity construction, cultural memory, and representation in Indigenous communities. The article considers Tsinhnahjinnie's foundational concept of photographic sovereignty as explored through her interactions with nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographic portraiture, both in her position as a viewer and as a cultural producer. Her reclamation of archival photographs in the photo-series Portraits Against Amnesia (2003); Double Vision (2010); and Damn! There Goes the Neighborhood (1998) facilitates an interpretive process that moves away from colonial narratives of representation. The article explores the ways in which the historical archive is paramount to these series, and functions as a catalyst for processes of recuperation and visual sovereignty.

Keywords:

• photographic sovereignty
• Indigenous photography
• cultural memory
• postmemory
• photographic archive

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the following people and institutions for the use of the images reproduced in this article: Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, the Great Plains Art Museum (University of Nebraska - Lincoln), and the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Notes on contributor

Emma Doubt is an AHRC-funded doctoral candidate in the art history department at the University of Sussex. She holds a BA in literature and art history, and an MA in art history, both completed at McGill University in Montreal. Between 2014-2015 she was a visiting research fellow in the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

ORCID

Emma Doubt http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6054-7134

Notes

1. Following Passalacqua (2009), I use the terms ‘Native’ and ‘Indigenous’ to refer to Native North American subjects and groups.

2. On his personal website Jeffrey Thomas writes the following of his self-identification as urban-Iroquois: ‘You won't find a definition for “urban Iroquois” in any dictionary or anthropological publication – it is this absence that informs my work as a photo-based artist, researcher, independent curator, cultural analyst and public speaker’. See ‘Jeff Thomas: A Study of Indian-ness', at www.scoutingforindians.com (accessed 11 November 2015).

3. Lidchi and Tsinhnahjinnie discuss Hirsch's contribution to the field of postcolonial photography with her theory of postmemory in their introduction to Visual Currencies, contrasting her incorporation of melancholy and psychoanalysis to Elizabeth Edwards's work on the materiality of photography, especially as it pertains to ethnographic genres.

4. For further discussions on hybridity in Tsinhnahjinnie's work, see Cynthia Fowler (2007).

5. This discussion is guided by Veronica Passalacqua's descriptions of the bidding process for Portraits Against Amnesia published in the transcript of her Geske Lecture presented in Lincoln, Nebraska on 31 January 2011, entitled ‘Archival Encounters’.

6. See also Joseph Bauerkemper (2011).

7. See note 5 re: published text of Passalacqua's lecture.

8. Fleming and Luskey date this photograph as being taken possibly in 1868. The Princeton University department of rare books and special collections has a copy of Jackson's Descriptive Catalogue of Photographs of North American Indians in which the photograph appears, and dates it according to the catalogue's publication date in 1877. The Denver Public Library's copy has a question mark around the 1868 date, and titles the image Tabeguache Warrior, ‘Sha-wa-no’ War Chief of Tabeguaches.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (USA).