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Visualizing histories: Experiences of spaceand place in photographs by Greg Staats andJeffrey ThomasAndrea N. WalshPublished online: 05 Nov 2010.

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DOI: 10.1080/1472586022013736 3

Visual Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2002

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

ANDREA N. WALSH*

Photographs by First Nations artists Jeffrey Thomasand Greg Staats re-view and re-vision colonial andpostcolonial experience and place in Canada. Thephotographs presented in this paper challenge muchcolonial photography that depicts aboriginal peoplescollectively as part of an ethnographic presentengaged in traditional cultural activities or in modesof cultural assimilation. Images by Thomas andStaats are fragmentary depictions of individualaboriginal identity and experience of history in post-colonial contexts. Notably the artists’ images lack thestereotypical signs of ‘Indianness’ that are prevalentin popular understanding of aboriginal identity andthat stem from the aforementioned colonial imagery.It is argued that the artists’ photographs do notrepresent a return of the colonial gaze documented insuch historical images; rather, their work suggestsalternative strategies of vision at play between FirstNations artists and their audiences in Canada.

Photography is an increasingly important media usedby contemporary First Nations artists in the produc-tion of visual culture in Canada; it also contributes toa larger project of re-viewing and re-visioning colo-nial and postcolonial spaces and places in thiscountry. The focus of this paper is the photographicwork of two Iroquoian artists, Jeffrey Thomas andGreg Staats, whose images subvert dominant colonialand postcolonial narratives and associated visualrepresentations of First Nations peoples. My intentionis to argue for the value of looking at these contempo-rary postcolonial images in terms of accessingparticular or individualized perspectives on FirstNations identity, history and experience of place. Isituate this discussion and analysis against colonialrepresentations of First Nations peoples that oftendepict their subjects as representative of certaincollectives and/or Nations.

Photographs by Thomas and Staats as well as thenarratives they provide for their images intersect,move away from, and challenge generic narratives ofcultural loss, discovery and/or renewal typical of thelast decade of First Nations art production in Canada.

Unlike much of the work created by First Nationsartists during this time, the particular work of Staatsand Thomas of which I am interested here often lacksvisible signs of difference, or signs of “Indianness”(feathers, beads, carving, face paint, buckskin, animalfur, teepees, horses, canoes etc.), available for easyconsumption by spectators. I believe this lack ofsymbolism disrupts the manner in which manyviewers have become accustomed to looking at FirstNations art and people.

Two types of colonial era imagery of FirstNations peoples in Canada produced by non-nativesare significant to considering how the work ofThomas and Staats contributes in new ways to inter-cultural understanding of history, identity and place.They are early paintings and photographs producedby artists whose project was to document the “disap-pearance” of aboriginal peoples at the turn of thecentury, and the body of photographic worksproduced largely by lay photographers that depictsaboriginal peoples as a homogeneous group of people(identified in the photographs most commonly bytheir nation rather than individual names) as part ofCanada’s colonial narrative of economic expansionand assimilation of First Nations into Canadiansociety. I will discuss each of these types of imagesbriefly to provide a base for discussing the photo-graphs of Thomas and Staats.

The association of aboriginal people with certainsigns of cultural identity has occurred in large partbecause of historical non-native narrative of FirstNations peoples and their cultures as vanishing duringthe late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Images produced and circulated out of these narra-tives tend to focus on the portrayal of aboriginal lifebefore contact with Europeans. This perspective ismost immediate in the photographs of Edward S.Curtis and paintings by artists such as Emily Carr,Frederick Verner and Paul Kane. A large portion ofthis imagery is portraiture of aboriginal peoples intraditional regalia or depicts aboriginal people in (andof) the natural landscape. This type of imagery hasundergone the now standard critique that authenticity

*Andrea Naomi Walsh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria. She was the Dr. Zdenka Volavka Fellowfor Studies of Indigenous Art Collections of North America from 1993 to 1994 while completing her M.A. at York University, and her Ph.D. is in SocialAnthropology from York University. Her research interests are visual anthropology and culture, contemporary art and critical theory.

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around these images as well as their value as factualdata on native cultures speaks more about theproducers and consumers of the images rather thantheir subjects. Nonetheless, these early images ofaboriginal peoples have remained a part of popularnon-native experience and understanding concerningaboriginal people to this day.

Aside from individual portraiture projects byindividual photographers during this time(1870–1945), much of the historical photographicimagery of First Nations peoples circulated in Canadahas signified aboriginal peoples’ identity as collectiveor stemming from a certain Nation. These photo-graphs depict people in either some process ofassimilation into Canadian society (through images ofwork and education) or as remaining distinct from it(through images of cultural practice and beliefs). Ineither case, these images signify generic aboriginalexperience/conditions much more than they speak tothe documentation of individual lives at certainhistorical moments. The typically non-native photog-raphers that created this body of imagery range fromgovernment officials to professional and lay photog-raphers as well as tourists. Despite the photographer’sbackground or specific agenda in taking the images,all the images fit into the narrative of colonial expan-sion, the growth of a national (and provincial)economy and the assimilation of aboriginal people inthe process.

I have chosen images from the British Columbiaarchives as examples of these themes. With fewexceptions all of the images, whether they connotesameness or difference, depict groups of people fromthe perspective of the photographer who stands at adistance away from the people in the image. He is aby-stander or onlooker and has photographed a situa-tion or activity. This is demonstrated in the imagetitled “Indians Bound for Cannery Work Boarding SSPrincess Macquinna” (Image 1). The photograph hasan approximate date of 1910–1920 and its author isunknown. The image depicts aboriginal peopleboarding a ship most likely on the west coast ofVancouver Island (Maquinna is a chiefly name of theNuu-Chah-Nulth Nation and their territory is in thislocale) to travel to one of the many salmon canneriesalong the coast of British Columbia. Aboriginalpeople in British Columbia were the primary sourceof seasonal workers in the fishing industry during theearly twentieth century. A similar picture to thisparticular image shows men and women boarding theship, but all of the people in the photograph have theirbacks facing the photographer and his camera. Like-wise in the photograph reproduced here, none of thepeople in the image are looking to the camera as ifthey were having their photograph taken as documen-tation of their personal journey on this ship. Thepeople in this image signify aboriginal people as a

collective becoming part of (being assimilated into)British Columbia’s labour pool based on its naturalresource-driven economy.

A significant part of a colonial narrative ofaboriginal existence emphasized aboriginal peoples’(specifically children’s) scholastic and religiouseducation. Many photographs document the massconversion of aboriginal peoples to Christianity as inthe image titled “Chehalis Indians ConfirmationClass” (Image 2). Taken on 16 May 1938, this imageshows a group of approximately one dozen aboriginalyouth on their day of Confirmation. Seated at thefront of this crowd are a non-native priest and perhapsbishop of the church. To the left of this group who areassembled on the church’s steps are a younger groupof children, perhaps signifying the next generation ofconverts. An important part of this image is thechurch building in the background as it too carriesweight as a sign of colonial domination and legitima-tion. Again, the image connotes aboriginal peoples asbecoming part of Western society en masse as part ofa broader agenda of assimilation.

Different from these photographs that connote apromotion of “sameness” under a colonial agenda ofprogress are images like the one titled “CowichanIndians Performing Whale Dance” (Image 3). Itdepicts a group of younger men dancing in regaliawith drummers in the background and it appears thegroup has gathered in a cedar plank longhouse. Thisimage was taken in 1945 by the British Columbiagovernment. Around this time, the provincial museumwas experiencing huge increases in visitors to theinstitution that prided itself on the documentation ofaboriginal peoples, history and culture in BritishColumbia. This type of photograph is typical of thekinds of information that contributed to governmentattempts to document current conditions of aboriginalpeoples. Curators of anthropology and history strivedto collect information on aboriginal cultural traditionsthat survived colonialism and assimilation policies.The Whale dance featured in this photograph would

Image 1. Indians Bound for Cannery Work Boarding SS Princess Macquinna. Courtesy British Columbia

Archives. Call number D-06893.

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Visualizing histories 39

be one of those traditions that interested curators aswell as the drumbeats and songs that accompanied thedance. The latter were most likely audio recorded.Though this photograph depicts the continuity ofaboriginal cultural beliefs and knowledge (as opposedto the two previous images of assimilation), it does sounder the guise of again representing aboriginalpeople in the form of a collective. There is no docu-mentation to accompany this image of the individua lpeople who are depicted, nor of the specifics of theevent at which the dance was performed. I read theimage as equating the dance with a tribe of people,rather than through individuals who may have ownedthe rights to the dance or the particular reasons whythey agreed for the photographs to be taken etc. Thephotograph is as much or more a document of postco-lonial government agendas and perspectives onaboriginal history and identity than it is a document ofCowichan peoples.

Turning to my focus on photographs by Thomasand Staats, the deficiency of easily recognizable signs(read stereotypical) of First Nations identity in theseimages makes my argument for their cultural signifi-cance to be based upon their ability to signifyaboriginal experience of space and place in Canadamore difficult given the fact that images of aboriginalpeople depicted as visually different (dressed in cere-monial regalia for example) and/or settings (usuallynon-urban and considered historical or “traditional”)have largely informed public opinion and knowledgeabout aboriginal peoples and contributed to the crea-tion of certain stereotypes. Despite the possibility that

the types of colonial photography I discussed abovemay be more accurate in their representations of day-to-day experiences of First Nations peoples, thesetypes of images were not circulated and consumed aswidely as were the more popular images of aboriginalpeople that depicted their difference via their looks orbeliefs and cultural practices. Indeed these popularimages of aboriginal peoples continue to circulate inthe realms of popular culture, tourism, new agephilosophies, and by aboriginal peoples themselvesthrough various forms of strategic essentialism.

The contemporary predicament of looking atphotographs that stem from different cultural perspec-tives necessarily raises questions about the contexts inwhich such photographs are viewed and what kinds of

Image 2. Harrison River. Chehalis Indians Confirmation Class. 1938. Courtesy British Columbia Archives.Call number F-00167.

Image 3. Cowichan Indians Performing Whale Dance. 1945. Courtesy of British Columbia Archives. Call number

I-27569.

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knowledge and experience the viewers of these photo-graphs must have to fully comprehend thephotographer’s intentions for the images. Finally, onemust consider the worthiness or the successfulness ofthese images as interfaces for intercultural spectator-ship and understanding. There are no singular orsimple responses to these points. It is my hope that thediscussion and arguments presented in this paperserve to reinforce the validity of pursuing questionsaround intercultural spectatorship and will provideexamples of departure points for further inquiry.

My perspective on contemporary photographs byThomas and Staats is derived from a combination ofviewing the images and examining texts from inter-views I have had over the years with each artist. Ofcourse without these two sets of data to movebetween, it would be very possible to interpret theimages on their own in a different manner than I dohere.1 I believe this method of working with photo-graphs by engaging artists in ethnographic interviewsis in line with current social science research thatseeks to engage the image as a medium or nodebetween cultural agents. I want to follow ElizabethEdward’s lead by thinking about photography as a“site for the articulation of other frames and otherforms of expression and consumption” (Edwards1997:53). I am interested in how artists create photo-graphs that signify intercultural understandings ofplace and space in Canada. How do aboriginal artistschallenge and attempt to direct their inter-culturalaudiences through their images? Can these strategiesdirect not only, how spectators see art, but also whatthey see in the art?

The act of looking to the past or into history aspart of any investigation about identity is oftencomplicated by a sense of nostalgia commonly associ-ated with a longing and/or desire for something thathas faded or disappeared and perhaps no longerattainable. The photographic work of Thomas andStaats steers clear away from any lament over the lossof something to history, or to the past. Rather, theirimages articulate the continuing power of things nolonger present, be those intangible like knowledgeand spirit, or tangible like physical places or people.Ideas and concepts of resistance to dominant narra-tives of colonial and postcolonial history, as well asrenewal of personal and cultural strength come to thefore in their work. This sense of intent in the work ofStaats and Thomas situates their photographs in alarger discussion of the contributions First Nationsartists are making to private postcolonial histories inCanada, rather than the public postcolonial History ofthe Nation.2

Until recently, the consumption of a dominantmetanarrative of Canada’s history and aboriginalpeoples’ involvement in its development has beenconsumed in a fairly uncritical way by the Canadian

body politic. This narrative of history has undeniablybeen presented through the Euro-Canadian viewpoint.This perspective has in some cases cast aboriginalpeoples in a positive light as members of self-deter-mined nations, and in others under a detrimental veilof homogeneity. As mentioned above, rarely are indi-vidual lives considered as part of theserepresentations.

My reading of photographs by Thomas and Staatsis set against the rise in awareness of space, place,identity and history that took place in the year 1992.This year marked in history the 500th anniversarysince the arrival of Columbus and his ships to theAmericas. Public reaction in Canada to events thatcelebrated this quincentenary were mixed. Indigenouspeoples from Canada and the United States whoprotested against the quincentenary did so under acommon banner of “500 Years of Resistance.” Thestory about the nautical error made by Columbus in1492 and the ensuing legacy of colonialism is wellknown. For many aboriginal people, the year 1492marks the beginning of generations of oppression anddisplacement, while many non-tribal peoples inplaces like the United States continue to celebrateColumbus’s inauguration of “The Age of Discovery”on 10 October of any given year.

In that same year two of Canada’s principalpublic cultural institutions, the National Art Gallery(NAG) in Ottawa, Ontario and the Canadian Museumof Civilization (CMCC) in Hull, Quebec exhibited forthe first time, art exhibitions by exclusively nativeartists. Neither Thomas nor Staats exhibited work inthese shows. The exhibitions were titled “Land,Spirit, Power” (at the NAG), and the “Indigena” (atthe CMCC), both were impressive in their sizeincluding the number of artists involved and theextensive media (catalogue texts and documentation)budgets supported by the two governmentinstitutions.

These 1992 exhibitions are still consideredpinnacle points in Canadian art history because of themanner in which they took a critical point of viewover issues pertaining to the legitimacy of historicalnarratives of European “discovery” of the Americasand the peoples who have lived there since timeimmemorial. A principle aim of the art and writing byaboriginal artists and writers participating in theseexhibitions was the public re-visioning of history andthe acknowledgement of both shared and parallelhistories between native and non-native people livingin Canada. This broad conceptual as well as verypublic mandate of resistance framed the viewing andconsumption of art made for these exhibitions .3

Contemporary artists in Canada like Thomas andStaats have not abandoned making work aroundlarger issues of decolonization, contested publichistories and cultural self-determination that were set

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Visualizing histories 41

into motion in 1992. However, they have increasedthe particularity of their subject matter and becomesubtler in their critiques of colonial and postcolonia lconditions for aboriginal peoples. Notably, they aretaking on more risk in their art by increasing exposureof private memories and desire in their photographsabout historical relations and their lives in the present.Photographs produced in this context take on thecurious role of nodal points referring both to memo-ries of the past while simultaneously providing theviewer with glimpses of present realities for theartists.

Jeffrey Thomas presently lives and works inOttawa, Ontario as a photographer and freelancecurator. Thomas began his career as a photographer asan adult while living in Buffalo, New York. My initialinterest in Thomas’s work came about after hearinghim speak about what he calls “Memory Landscape”.The Memory Landscape incorporates elements oftemporal and geographical frameworks and places; itsfoundations are modes of juxtaposition, construction,and practiced spaces and places.4 The work is remi-niscent of those images produced by Frenchphotographer Eugene Atget who devoted his career todocumenting the disappearing Parisian landscape ofthe nineteenth century, particularly public monu-ments. The photograph titled “Staircase” (Image 4)was taken while Thomas was taking pictures in anarea of Buffalo, New York that he knew his grandfa-ther (who died a week before Thomas was born)frequented often. As Thomas tells the story, just afterhe took the image of the staircase a man came out ofthe building and asked what he was doing. Thomasexplained he was a photographer and the man askedhim in. During Thomas’s conversation with thisunknown man in the bar that was upstairs in thebuilding, Thomas found out that his grandfather usedto come to that place regularly to place bets andgamble. Through this encounter and his photographof the place, Thomas became fascinated with theexposure of layers concerning sense of place experi-enced differently by two generations of Iroquoianmen moving through the same urban space. He thenposes the question to his viewers of what the image ofthat space means to them and their experience ofplace.

The photographs produced by Thomas from hisMemory Landscape visually document his experienceof urban spaces at historical moments of his makingand recognition. So being, the Memory Landscape isa combination of tangible and intangible referents forwhich Thomas alone can provide particular contextfor his viewers about the images. Most of the audi-ence for Thomas’s photographs are urban dwellersthemselves and see his work in contemporary artgalleries that are located in urban centres. Hence, theywill have familiarity with the imagery in Thomas’s

Memory Landscape. Without the aid of any additionaltext, however, I believe viewers can still workthrough and reflect upon the urban landscape or cityas a sign connoting place, dwelling, habitation, terri-tory, or at the very least, the notion of contested andnegotiated space. It is the last of these meanings that Ibelieve provides a departure point for viewers toconsider Thomas’s own experience and identity as aFirst Nations person in a postcolonial urbanlandscape.

The images in Thomas’s Memory Landscapeimpart of a sense of transience and human mobilityon small and large scales (abandoned buildings,closed shops, graffiti of gangs passing through, fami-lies who have themselves or generations before themmigrated to this place). The images connote a senseof place in which human activity has occurred andthe photographs document what remains in the wakeof such activity. The photographs “Kam LeeLaundry”, “Warrior Symbols” and “Graffiti in aWinnipeg Alley” (Images 5–7) signify the contestedand negotiated spaces that have had impact uponThomas’s life. The images reference the constantnegotiation of identity and place through the layeringof spray paint or the multiple uses of out of the wayor hidden space like that of a loading dock – for retailexchange, for storage, for drinking, for sleeping, forshelter. For many urban First Nations peoples, thethreats of gang activity (particularly for youths), oflife on the street and homelessness are very real. Thefallout of colonial policies of assimilation towardaboriginal peoples has created the reality that over50% of aboriginal people in Canada live in urbanspaces with many living well below the level ofpoverty. In the struggle for self-determination experi-enced by First Nations people at the level of theindividual and the nation, the ability to separatethemselves from the “multi-cultural” fabric ofCanada as distinct and original peoples is often diffi-cult and complex.

Image 4. Staircase. Jeff Thomas. Buffalo, New York. 1981. Collection of the Artist.

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My reading of these images of Memory Land-scape by Thomas includes how Thomas sees non-native society moving around him and how he moveshis own body through these contested and negotiatedspaces made visual by “other” peoples’ architecture,signage and garbage or refuse. Unlike the colonialphotographs that literally view aboriginal peopleparticipating in non-native worlds (Images 1 and 2),Thomas’s photographs indicate the view from his

perspective as postcolonial aboriginal participant inthat North American society.

The meaning and significance of these MemoryLandscape photographs is twofold. One, they impart asense of particularized knowledge/experience fromthe viewpoint of an aboriginal person living incontemporary urban society. Two, the images toproduce multiple meanings that connote the diversityof experience and knowledge that one place, like thecity, can represent for the many different people wholive there. Viewers look at what these spaces mean tothem as individuals, and then contemplate the artist’sreasons for creating the image. At what point do thesetwo experiences, viewpoints and perspectives inter-sect? Where and when are they divergent?

Questions concerning why and how these photo-graphs act as nodal points for interculturalspectatorship are important parts of these visualexchanges. Hence, the visual strategies at play inThomas’s work are at once subtle and complex andthey are not located on the surface of the work.Indeed, Thomas’s art can change the way his viewerssee art about First Nations identity and sense of place,but it also changes what they see if they can avoidfrustration from the lack of immediately legiblesymbols associated with Indian identity.

Image 5. Warrior Symbols. Jeff Thomas. Buffalo, New York. 1983. Collection of the Artist.

Image 6. Graffiti in a Winnipeg Alley. Jeff Thomas. Winnipeg, Manitoba. 1989. Collection of the Artist.

Image 7. Kam Lee Laundry. Jeff Thomas. Buffalo, New York. 1981. Collection of the Artist.

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Visualizing histories 43

Contrasted against this Memory Landscape thatsignifies postcolonial urban spaces determined byconflict, dispossession and migration, all of whichbring about a sense of impermanence, are the portraitsthat Thomas has produced of his son Bear in thesesame spaces. This body of work documents BearThomas growing up as a third generation urbanaboriginal person. The images present an argumentfor a sense of continuity of aboriginal presence andidentity in such spaces, but they resist being cast intocategories of sameness or difference that the previ-ously discussed colonial images portray. Moreover,the portraits of Bear subvert and disrupt many colo-nial narratives of progress, history, and aboriginalidentity. Thomas accomplishes this latter point bysituating Bear in front of visual referents to coloni-alism. This placement of Bear’s body sabotages adirect sightline of the viewer to that reference thussymbolically interrupting its meaning or narrative.

The portraits document the process of a fathertransferring his own ideas of subjectivity, identity,history, and sense of place on to his son. Thomas toldme in an interview: “I use my son as a way of puttingmyself into the landscape. I am saying that there isnothing here that says that there were Indian peoplehere before, or even that had been by there recently. Iuse Bear as a way to leave a mark on the landscape”.5

The portraits of Bear are dated from the early 1980sand as such follow from Thomas’s Memory Land-scape work that depicts urban spaces largely devoidof human bodies in general. The sense of imperma-nence imparted by earlier Memory Landscapephotographs is countered by a sense of permanence inthe portraits of Bear. The argument for a sense ofindividualized history begins by Thomas engaging thememory of his grandfather becoming an urban aborig-inal person after being born and raised in theIroquoian longhouse and how this urban existencecontinues through his grandson. The beginning of theportraits of Bear show a young child obeying hisfather to stand in a certain place to have his photo-graph taken, however, in later images there isevidence that Bear develops his own sense of purposeand history as well as his own reasons for docu-menting them on film. This inter-generationa lexperience of space and history by a father and soncontributes to a body of particular knowledgeconcerning how these men have chosen to personallychallenge master narratives of history, place and iden-tity for aboriginal peoples in Canada and what issueswithin these categories are worthy of their critique.

The portraits of Bear deal in large part with thelegacy of colonial interruption of aboriginal culturesand the demands that some aboriginal peoplescontinue to feel placed on their identity as a result ofliving in “two worlds”. For Thomas, the portraits ofBear are also points of reflection on his own life

growing up as an urban aboriginal person and theexperience he had of finding a place where he wascomfortable between his urban existence and tradi-tional Iroquoian beliefs. The following quote takenfrom an interview makes clear the questions Thomashas about his own experience of postcolonial spacesas an aboriginal person and his understanding of howone deals with the history of colonialism.

I had been going around to different commu-nities and talking to chiefs and bringing upissues like how do you deal with having theseold time ideas in your mind and live in themodern world and how do you reconcilethese two frameworks? I realized that after acertain point it’s not about going back to that,it’s about defining a new space. And ofcourse, I’m a product of that evolution, of theurban Indian. I did not ask to be there, but Ihave to deal with being born and raised in thecity. So what do I do? Do I have a constantfight with this my whole life or do I find away to deal with these elements that make upwho I am? So that’s been the driving forcebehind the work. I want my son to look andsee the process that I have gone through andhopefully it will help him deal with his life.Certainly his life is different from mine; hedid not grow up around the same people I did.So the idea is not about staying in one place.It is always about moving and adapting.Certainly, that has been the history of FirstNations peoples since Europeans arrived. Ithas been about assimilating certain aspectsand culture continues to grow onward.Certainly, the Iroquoian people in the 18thcentury were nothing like the ones in the 16thcentury. That is always how it has been.However, when you have this compartmen-talized life, everything is shuffled into theselittle areas and it is seemingly easilyexplained. I just do not think that you can dothat. It is the exploration of the new landscapethat really determines how well we are goingto survive it. We have to become explorers,and if you do not, you will vanish.

The portraits produced by Thomas of his son resonatewith several points made by the artist. The “new land-scape” to which Thomas refers is certainly the urbanlandscape within which we see Bear and the imagesdenote issues stemming from colonial encounters andhistory that have affected aboriginal peoples’ identity.The specific images I will discuss below avoid repre-sentation of “compartmentalized life” to whichThomas refers, if one understands this term to beabout strict boundaries around notions of identity andlifestyles (traditional versus contemporary, urban

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versus reserve etc.). I want to argue that these photo-graphs depict Bear’s identity as existing betweencategories created out of colonial imagery of same-ness and difference and as such reveal a particular andnegotiated reality.

The photograph titled “Culture Revolution”(Image 8) depicts Bear as a little boy standing with abaseball hat that has on it a reproduction of EdwardCurtis’s photograph of the man called Two Moons.The image depicts Bear as a compliant young boy infront of graffiti-sprayed wall depicting the wordsculture and revolution. These spray-painted words onthe wall in front of which Bear stands are evidence ofa previous act of resistance that defied the law andorder of society. The meaning of the spray-paintedtext connotes the deeply complex aspect of humanexistence that is culture, and the human struggle forculture to be either maintained or challenged, at timesin violent ways. The placement of the young boy atthe outset of his life and understanding of culturalvalues stands opposite the connotations of lost inno-cence inherent in the words “culture” and“revolution”. However, it is important go beyondthese binary categories and to see the meaning of thephotograph as developing for each viewer in the spacebetween the representation of Bear’s body and thespray-painted text. A superficial reading of the imagecan signify departure points for discussing Bear’sidentity and Thomas’s reason for taking his son’sportrait. Among others one can speak of issues ofinnocence, hope, strength, and resistance. A deeperreading is possible if one considers the significance ofThomas’s inclusion of the reproduction of the Curtisphotograph (read colonial imagery of aboriginalpeoples) depicted on Bear’s baseball hat. I read thissmall visual detail as important to understandingThomas’s culturally specific challenge to the histor-ical representation of aboriginal peoples. This portraitis the beginning a visual culture revolution of

Thomas’s own making using the body and identity ofhis son.

In the photograph “I Don’t Have to be a Cowboy”(Image 9), Bear’s image is juxtaposed with signs ofthe frontier cowboy/Indian dialectic of consumerculture. Bear is shown in the foreground wearing a T-shirt and jacket with a ball cap as a hat, clothingtypical of contemporary fashion for a young boy hisage in North America. The mannequin wears “tradi-tional” cowboy attire of a cowboy hat, bandana andbutton-down shirt. Meaning for this photograph isagain developed in the space between Bear’s bodyand that of the postcolonial referent, the cowboy.Issues of traditionalism and authenticity, development

Image 8. Culture Revolution. Jeff Thomas. Trent, Ontario. 1984. Collection of the Artist.

Image 9. I Don’t Have to be a Cowboy. Jeff Thomas. Assembled 1996. Collection of the Artist.

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of the boy’s identity, constitution of subjectivity, andunderstanding of histories are central to discussions ofthis portrait. In the narrative of the Wild West, thecowboy always is declared the winner of the battle.This outcome of the battles is so ingrained in theminds of children playing the game of “Cowboys andIndians” that every child wishes to be the victor, thecowboy. This childhood game is made complex bythe reality of growing up under such narratives andstereotyping. Knowing about Thomas’s own struggleto overcome racial stereotyping from interview text,his act of taking his son’s portrait as he has here signi-fies the construction of identity against colonial ideasof Indianness as an ongoing dilemma in each person’slife. Adding to this cultural concern, the images in thetriptych also point to issues around consumer culture,peer pressure, and violence as made evident by thegraffiti-painted skull. By titling this triptych with anegative, Thomas signifies the possibilities for Bearto choose his own identity; he empowers the boy withroom to manoeuvre and find his place between bina-ries of traditional and contemporary lifestyles, urbanand reserve existence, the cowboy and the Indian.

In the images of Bear as a young child, we seehim looking directly into the camera lens. Moreover, Iwould argue, the boy is looking directly at his fatherwho is taking the picture. As Bear grows older, hecontinues to look straight into the camera lensshowing little emotion. In the latter photographssunglasses hide his eyes, his agenda for having hisphotograph taken continues to be hidden from us asviewers. Nonetheless, these images are markedlydifferent from those taken by non-native photogra-phers in the early twentieth century that did notexhibit any kind of special relationship between thephotographer and his subjects. The recognition of therelationship between father and son is important tothe shift in meaning and context for the production ofthese portraits from those of the colonial photogra-phers documenting collectives of people engaged indaily activities.

Thomas directly confronts his viewers withBear’s body in “Indian Treaty no. 1” and “Founder ofthe New World” (Images 10 and 11). In the case ofthe former image, Bear’s body directly interrupts theviewer’s ability to read through a non-native writtentext of the history of Indian Treaty no. 1 in Manitoba.The juxtaposition of the living body and the historicaltext connotes resistance to the story told on the monu-ment of aboriginal peoples’ place and history inCanada. The young man who stands in front of thattext, disrupting its interpretation, signifies for theviewer contemporary lives of aboriginal individualsafter these treaties were signed between nations. Themonument speaks to Canada’s history as a nationinteracting with First Nations as collectives.Thomas’s portrait of Bear questions the validity of

metanarratives of history by inserting the image of anindividual person in front of the monument dedicatedto the actions of collectives. In so doing, he insertsinto this image of remembrance for Treaty no. 1 theparticularity of embodied or tactile knowledge thatcomes from living in the shadow of such narratives.

Image 10. Indian Treaty no. 1. Jeff Thomas. Lower Fort Garry, Manitoba. 1989. Collection of the Artist.

Image 11. Founder of the New World. Jeff Thomas. Winnipeg, Manitoba. 1988. Collection of the Artist.

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“Founder of the New World” also uses text foundin the image to signify the tension between narrativesof history and the reality of lives lived. I wouldcompare this photograph to that of Image 1, showingaboriginal people on the north-west coast ofVancouver Island boarding the ship en route to thecannery. To reiterate, that photograph signifiesaboriginal participation (under the veil of assimila-tion) in a growing provincial economy based onnatural resources that before contact were consideredtheir own. In this postcolonial portrait Bear stands infront of a railway track on which a train with anexpress container car sits. I liken the train in thisimage to the ship carrying anonymous people andgoods as part of economic expansion. Except in thisimage, Thomas’s point is to question the history ofColumbus’s “discovery” of the new world and theensuing colonial expansion that would eventually seeaboriginal people dispossessed of their lands andresources and wards of the federal government. Hedoes so by juxtaposing the very particular body ofBear Thomas against such anonymous signifiers of

capitalism. I argue that the image asks us to considerthe daily realities for Bear as a young aboriginal mangrowing up in the context of such dispossession anddisplacement.

Arguably one could say that at his age in thephotographs, Bear might not fully comprehend thecomplex social, political and economic facets of colo-nialism and settlement in Canada. However, I wouldargue that he understands his own life and placewithin a postcolonial context, even if he does not usethat specific terminology himself.

As such, these last two images depart from thephotographs of Bear as a small boy simply standingwhere his father tells him. I would suggest thatlooking at the age of Bear in these later images, thathe is beginning to develop his own sense of self, hisindividual identity as a First Nations person living inpostcolonial spaces, and this is significant to hisparticipation in his father’s project of creating hisportrait. Furthering my particular reading of theselater images, Bear appears to share the joke with hisfather as he stands under the General Store image of astereotypical Indian in the photograph “Indian Heads”(Image 12). In the discussion of racial stereotyping,consumer culture and authenticity, the question that israised by this portrait of Bear is, who is the real Indianhere?

In the portrait, simply titled “Bear” (Image 14),the bottom half of the image depicts Bear facing thecamera in an ambivalent manner. His eyes arecovered by sunglasses and his arms hang casuallyalong his side as he stands against a stark black back-ground. For this portrait Thomas has juxtaposedimagery from one of his earliest portraits of Bear(Image 13) (taken in 1984) with this image of Bear asa young adult (taken in 1995). The repeated imageryis that of a relief carved scene of voyageurs in a canoealong river rapids. We know that as an adult, Bear andhis father have not physically returned to the spotwhere his portrait was taken many years ago. Yet,there is a recursive quality to the 1995 image that re-visits a landscape from the travels of father and sonover ten years prior. Viewed together, these twoportraits impart a discussion based more on the act of(re) discovery than they do of repetition. As Thomassaid in a quote that appeared earlier in this text, “theidea is not about staying in one place. It is alwaysabout moving and adapting. It is the exploration of thenew landscape that really determines how well we aregoing to survive it. We have to become explorers, andif you do not, you will vanish”. The two images ofBear (as a little boy and as an adult) juxtaposedagainst the imagery of the voyageurs document andrecord the attempt of a father and son to make theirmark on the landscape, to impart to spectators visualfragments of shared family, or private embodiedknowledge/experience of place.

Image 12. Indian Heads. Jeff Thomas. Toronto, Ontario. 1994. Collection of the Artist.

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The images of Bear taken by his father JeffThomas allude to a larger conversation about theaboriginal body in public history. These photographsare departure points for a growing public knowledgeand awareness of the culturally diverse experiences ofplace and space from the perspective of these twoIroquoian men. Born from the particular body of Bearwith a private history, spectators have before themnew visual narratives of place and space to consideras part of shared postcolonial space and place.

In taking the portraits of his son, Thomas engagesintellectually and artistically with the work of colo-nial era photographer Edward S. Curtis. In spite ofthis intersection of interests, Thomas’s photographsdiffer greatly from those portraits of aboriginalpeoples taken by Curtis in the early part of the twen-tieth century. Thomas goes to great effort to depict thebody of his son in cultural and physical landscapes,whereas Curtis took great pains to delete any refer-ence to modern surroundings of his subjects. Thephotographer often left black or white spaces aroundhis subjects in their photographs, so as to isolate their

image from any influencing context. Thus, it is thejuxtaposition or relationship of the body and placethat makes Thomas’ work relevant to this discussionof history, place and identity. The placement ofBear’s body in front of colonial referents sabotagesthe viewer’s sightline to the image and thus interruptsthe telling of its narratives.

Like Thomas’s portraits, Greg Staats’ photo-graphs make constant reference to the human body,many times through its deliberate absence from theimage. The images of the series Memories of aCollective Reality – Sour Springs (Images 15–17)focus on “traces”6 of experience, remembrance anddesire. The images communicate ideas about humanabsence and presence and of longing and belongingwithin particular landscapes. The series is composedof fourteen black and white photographs installed in asingle row along a gallery wall. During an interviewdiscussion about this piece, Staats read to me from hisnotebook two quotes that he felt inspired him whilecreating the series. These quotes reference both lossand renewal. The first is by T. S. Elliot and the secondby Martin Heidegger. He read: “We shall not ceasefrom exploration. The end of all our exploring will be

Image 13. Untitled. Jeff Thomas. 1984. Collection ofthe Artist.

Image 14. Bear. Jeff Thomas. Toronto, Ontario. 1995. Collection of the Artist.

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to arrive where we started and know the place for thefirst time” and “If you were to experience your ownbeing to the full, you would be experiencing the decayof that being toward death as a part of yourexperience.”

The places that occur in Memories of a CollectiveReality – Sour Springs are locations on the SixNations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario where Staatswas born. Staats created the series upon a return visitto Sour Springs in 1995. For him, the reserve is a

physical site that triggers memory of loss andrenewal. Though he has placed only one photographof himself in the line of images, he describes theentire fourteen-photograph piece as “a portrait ofmyself.” The majority of the images portray the insideand outside of a house, the exterior landscape (close-up and distance shots). Overall, the piece referencesthe integration between the living and the dead in thelandscape (loss and renewal). The image of the aban-doned house connotes past lives carried out in thatspace. The trees in the exterior shots appear withoutleaves. This image can be read either as the dead ofwinter or the coming of spring. The wind that movesStaats’s hair in his self-portrait as well as the shadowshe uses throughout his pictures document a livingnatural landscape on which time passes in a dynamicway. The images of Sour Springs also refer to humanmanipulation of that environment in search of crea-ture comforts (the house, the light post, tire tracks).The images prompt questions from the viewer. Howdo the other men who are depicted in the imagesexperience their lives in this space? How are spaceand place culturally experienced and known?

These images are reminiscent of Thomas’sMemory Landscape where the viewer is able to fixher gaze on aspects of the image that resonate withher own particular experience and knowledge. Thelack of stereotypical signs of Indianness allows for awider interpretation of meaning in connection withthe place of the Six Nations reserve. I agree with Eliz-abeth Edwards on the importance of working throughsuch images that in part are ambiguous for thepurpose of critical cultural inquiry. She writes, “theviewer has a space and is conscious of the ambiguityof the image which allow access to the experience ofa situation in all its complexity rather than thepretence of surface understanding” (Edwards1997:60). It is the provision in these photographs forsuch play of signification that I think is important to

Image 15. Memories of a Collective Reality – Sour Springs. Greg Staats. 1995. 14–20 in. ́ 24 in. silver prints.

Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Image 16. Memories of a Collective Reality – Sour Springs. Greg Staats. 1995. 14–20 in. ́ 24 in. silver prints.

Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Image 17. Memories of a Collective Reality – Sour Springs. Greg Staats. 1995. 14–20 in. ́ 24 in. silver prints.

Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

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intercultural awareness of postcolonial space inCanada as well as toward building more particular-ized knowledge of experience by First Nationspeoples than is in circulation at present.

Unlike Thomas’s portraits of his son where theviewers are provoked into creating a relationshipbetween the boy and his environment, and where theimages promote a “this is how it is” narrative, Staats’images are not politically charged in this manner.Rather, Staats revels in the poetics of photographicrepresentation and focuses his attention on deliveringvisual metaphor of the postcolonial space of theIndian Reserve. Writing about Staats’ work, JanetClark states, “this is a narrative that is at once bothspecific and generic, extending beyond the immediaterepresentation to layers of meaning in which otherscan share. It is a collective reality to which Staatsmakes reference with the intention of communicatingthe idea of memory to others” (1995). If the visualcontent of each portrait by Thomas provides departurepoints for understanding particular experiences ofaboriginal identity, then it is the composition andrhythm of imagery in Staats’ photographs thatdemonstrate the artist’s intent of visually representinghis experiences of loss and renewal through a balance

of form and content. Thus, the “formalist tendencies”of Staats’ images “do not necessarily conflict withrealist interests; on the contrary they may helpsubstantiate and fulfil it” (Edwards 1997:58).7

As an urban photographer working in the city ofToronto, Canada, Staats has focused much of hiswork about loss and renewal on objects and narrativesto be found within the borders of the city limits. In hislatest series of photographs created in 2001 (Images18 and 19), Staats has turned his attention once againtoward his home on the Six Nations reserve nearBrantford, Ontario. In this series of colour images,Staats documents sites where log and frame housesformerly stood, once again putting into practice therelationship between memory, loss and renewal. As asmall child Staats visited these homes and listened ashis mother interviewed the older people who lived inthem. His mother, who worked as a librarian, felt itwas important to record the collective histories ofrural experiences that she felt were not being passedon at that time. Recently, as part of the creation ofthese photographs, Staats has picked up the work ofhis mother and is currently researching through bandrecords the histories of the former occupants of thesehouse sites.

These latter images by Staats test the viewer’ssense of objectivity, of understanding the medium of

Image 18. Untitled. [Six Nations Reserve.] Greg Staats. 2001. Edition 3, 1 artist proof. 13 in. ´ 19 in. C-print.

Collection of the Indian Art Centre, Hull, Quebec.

Image 19. Untitled. [Six Nations Reserve.] Greg Staats. 2001. Edition 3, 1 artist proof. 13 in. ´ 19 in. C-print.

Collection of the Indian Art Centre, Hull, Quebec.

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photography as a recording device of “facts” and theirnecessity to our understanding of the human condi-tion. I would argue that Staats has documented thespace of the Six Nations Reserve in a way thatpurposefully slips between fact and fiction and objec-tivity and subjectivity, between representing thereserve as a place of individual experience and collec-tive identity, between loss and renewal. Thisrepresentation of states of “in-betweenness” is Staats’contribution to particularized knowledge and experi-ence of space and place as a First Nations person.

Rather than thinking of the photographs by Staatsand Thomas discussed here as vehicles to “fix” histo-ries and identities, I have argued towards viewingthem as sites of slippage in arenas of intercultura lspectatorship between private experience/knowledgeand public histories of First Nations collective iden-tity. Looking at photographs as I have is not aninnocent act of spectatorship. In such an act notions oftruth and power (see Foucault 1980), objectification ,and subjectivity intertwine to create contested mean-ings for the identity of the producer and the viewer.By viewing the works the way I have as representa-tions of particularized and individual aboriginalexperience of space and place, processes of identifica-tion do not necessarily fail for some viewers, ratherthey constantly slip and move between instances ofsuture8 and loss, and presence and absence. It is thisslipperiness of content and image that I find mostengaging and challenging when considering howthese works intersect with contemporary theories ofproduction and reception of visual culture and art.

The importance of critically examining the workof photographers like Thomas and Staats is the possi-bility of new ways of understanding shared colonial/postcolonial histories of native and non-nativepeoples. These types of investigations into visualculture have far-reaching political/economic/socialimplications for the present and future. Notably, thework of Thomas and Staats deconstructs modernisttexts founded upon the dialectical relation betweenobservers and observed. The critique to date of thisrelationship has placed emphasis on the fact that inCanada, the observer (and the inherent power locatedin this position) has historically rested with peoplewho held colonial authority over aboriginal peoples incolonial contexts, from government officials toanthropologists for example. It is often stated thatcontemporary aboriginal photographers (and aborig-inal artists in general) work against such determinismand visual strategies of power based on this observer/observed dialectic. One also reads on a regular basisthat aboriginal artists create art that effectively“returns the gaze” of the observer, historically thelikes of non-native government officials or scholars ofaboriginal cultures. I take the position that the conceptof returning the gaze oversimplifies the visual politic

of representation and identity between aboriginalartists, their art, and their spectators. By limiting crit-ical analysis of art by First Nations artists to factorsthat relate only to the returning colonial gazes, theagency of these artists is reduced to that of responserather than initiation of visual dialogue. The result ofsuch analysis is a perpetuation of the dialectic ofobserver/observed that maintains a simplified linearconcept of vision that only works via a back and forthmotion on a line of vision established through colo-nial contexts of representation and knowledge. I dobelieve that each situation of spectatorship has agentswho can be observers, and there are those who areobserved. There does need to be, however, room foralternative visual strategies other than those labeled as“the gaze” and a simple “return” of that gaze.

Photographs by Staats and Thomas provide entrypoints to such alternative points of view, or differentperspectives. They need to be seen as existing beyondsimple counter-narratives to dominant images ofNative peoples and history, or products created out ofresponse to colonial images of aboriginal peoplesthrough history. Rather, I see these works as originalstarting points for telling both private/individual andpublic/collective First Nations histories that runparallel to, while at times intersect, dominant Cana-dian narratives of history, identity and place.Although both photographers are aware of the historyof aboriginal images (and their politics) of which theirwork is part, the weight of their agenda in creatingphotographs seemingly rests on present conditionsand those of the future, rather than those of the past.In other words, neither photographer sets out to “setthe record straight” or expose the falseness ofprevious photographs of aboriginal people and theircirculation and consumption. Both photographersrefuse to be engaged in well-worn debates overauthenticity where the point is to counter “inaccurate”historical images with “accurate” visual portrayals ofFirst Nations people. In so doing, the artists and theirart provide much needed points of departure forconsidering alternative strategies of vision andperspective that represent experiences of space andplace, histories and identity in postcolonial Canada.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSI am very grateful to Jon Prosser and the anonymousreviewer for their constructive criticism andcomments on this paper, their comments have broughtto the fore many new thoughts in my own mind aboutcritical writing on visual culture. I also wish toacknowledge Lisa Mitchell and Adrienne Bonfontifor their reflections on and assistance preparing theimages presented in this paper. I am most indebted tothe artists Jeffrey Thomas and Greg Staats for givingme their time and attention, as well as slides and

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photographs with which to work, and not least, theirpermission to reproduce their work for this paper;they are generous colleagues indeed.

NOTES

[1] My own ethnic background is Canadian. My ancestors areIrish, English, Scottish and my great great grandmother wasNla’kapamux. My initial academic training was as an artistspecializing in printmaking. My graduate school researcharea was Visual Anthropology and I now teach and researchin this field.

[2] Gerald McMaster uses this distinction in his article,“Towards an Aboriginal art history” (1999). McMasternotes the origin of the distinction between History andhistories in the writing of Thomas McEvilley. FollowingMcEvilley, McMaster writes that Eurocentric History(upper case) has been called into question by aboriginalartists, and its “dominant intellectual space is now cominginto contact with, and being perforated by, other histories(lower case), especially by those which do not count Europeas part of their lineage” (1999:82).

[3] Of the thirty-four artists represented in both exhibitions onlyone artist, Edward Poitras, exhibited photographic work.There were three artists who presented film or video work.

[4] My use of the term “practiced space” refers to the work ofMichel de Certeau (1984).

[5] All quotes in this paper by Jeff Thomas are taken from aninterview with the author on 7 August 1998.

[6] All quotes in this paper by Greg Staats are taken from aninterview with the author on 11 February 1998.

[7] Here Elizabeth Edwards refers to the work of SiegfriedKracauer in his book Theory of Film (Oxford UniversityPress, 1960).

[8] For more information on the concept of suture, seeSilverman (1983).

REFERENCES

Clark, Janet. 1995. Greg Staats: Memories of a CollectiveReality – Sour Springs. Thunder Bay: Thunder BayArt Gallery.

de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life.Berkeley: University of California Press.

Edwards, Elizabeth. 1997. “Beyond the boundary: aconsideration of the expressive in photography andanthropology,” in Marcus Banks and Howard Morphy,eds, Rethinking Visual Anthropology. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Inter-views and Other Writings 1972–1977. Translated andedited by Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books.

McMaster, Gerald. 1999. “Towards and Aboriginal arthistory,” in Jackson W. Rushing, ed., Native AmericanArt in the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge Press.

Silverman, Kaja. 1983. The Subject of Semiotics. NewYork: Oxford University Press.

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