Revitalizing the Records: Examining the Photographic Work of Shelley Niro and Jeffrey Thomas

Written by Sarah Ford
Edited by Alena Russell 

Harmful myths surrounding Indigenous peoples permeate the photographic colonial archive and are rendered all the more insidious as a result of the supposed ontological truth of photography (1).  This paper examines how Mohawk photographer Shelley Niro and urban Iroquois photographer Jeffrey Thomas reclaim photographic authority to unsettle and repurpose the colonial archive and its myths. Using theoretical analysis from Métis scholar Sherry Farrell  Racette, art historian Okwui Enwezor, and scholar Carol Payne, as well as published interviews with the artists themselves, the paper examines how these Haudenosaunee artists re-contextualize and revitalize the archive. 

In order to situate artistic responses, it is crucial to examine the authority attributed to the colonial archive. Métis scholar Sherry Farrell Racette uses the term “photo-colonialism” to reference the use of photography in reinforcing colonial narratives, and underlines the damaging nature of “the authority given to [these] representations”(2). This authority largely originates from the ontology of photography, and the belief that the photograph is linked to an objective reality (3). A photograph depends on a subject’s presence in front of the lens and due to this ontology, art historian Enwezor states that “the idea of the photograph as an archival record … of its subject’s existence are the bedrock of photography”(4). Due to the belief in this photographic proof of existence, photography is often seen as what scholar Payne calls a “universal language based on empirical truths” (5). Payne describes how the form of the archive further implies this unquestioned authority as a result of the illusory objectivity and impartiality of its organizational system (6). However, most contemporary scholars will recognize the subjectivity inherent to photography, and its constructive capacities (7).  Historically, photo-colonialism has exemplified this fabrication, as prolific early-twentieth-century photographers like Edward Curtis imposed extraneous props and clothing in photographs of Indigenous peoples (8). This fictionalization not only challenges the belief in photographic objectivity, but also results in the propagation of various myths, including the denial of coevalness, which scholar Johannes Fabian describes as the tendency to place the “other” outside the time of the anthropologist (9).  As a result, Indigenous peoples are often relegated to the past.10 This myth is embedded within Curtis’ photographs, taken with the ethnographic intent of documenting what many colonizers viewed as a “dying race”(11). 

Haudenosaunee peoples have a particularly poignant relationship to this so-called photographic authority and the myths associated to it, being among the earliest North American Indigenous peoples to encounter colonial explorers and, therefore, among the first to be photographed and studied (12).  Scholar Bruce Elliott Johansen posits that “the Haudenosaunee probably have been the subject of more anthropological study per capita than any other people on Earth” (13).  Nineteenth-century anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan invoked the idea of the Haudenosaunee as a “dying race” in describing them as “the scattered and feeble remnants of this once powerful league” (14).  While these myths present obvious fallacies, Racette states that, “regardless of rigorous critiques of the inaccuracy and artificiality of photo-colonialism, its authority continues to have power”(15). Therefore, photo-colonial images of Indigenous peoples, regardless of fabrication, have often been interpreted as authoritative evidence, along with the myths encoded within them (16).  However, there has been a growing emergence of counter-evidence, as Haudenosaunee photographers employ the camera to document their own realities (17). 

The works of Niro and Thomas are prime examples of the reclamation of photographic authority and succeed in challenging colonial myths through a contemporary Haudenosaunee lens (18).  As Racette states, the immediacy of photography renders it an especially useful medium for Indigenous photographers (19).  Niro’s Red Heels Hard (fig. 1), a 1991 photograph of the artist’s sisters posing comically in Brantford, Ontario, confidently asserts the continued presence of Mohawk women (20). The inclusion of a car, buildings, and paved roads clearly situates these women in the contemporary. While the image is primarily black-and-white, the women are rendered in bright colours, resisting a sense of historicity. This modernness is further illustrated through the pop culture references to The Wizard of Oz in the hand-tinted yellow brick road and ruby shoes (21).  In interviews with the photographer, Niro has stated that she intended to imply the story’s famous line, “there’s no place like home,” asserting the women’s belonging on this land and in this temporality (22). Moreover, the image implies movement, as it is part of a series of photographs featuring the artist’s sisters in eccentric poses, resisting the idea that Mohawk women are static artefacts of the past (23).  Niro states that she and her sisters “invaded” the city in an act that was “liberating in the fact that we just allowed ourselves to act, to be flamboyant and outrageous”(24). Therefore, the women not only occupy this space and temporality, but claim it with bold personality.  

Figure 1. Shelley Niro, Red Heels Hard, hand-tinted photograph on paper, 1991. Accessed at  https://photolife.com/2018/04/scotiabank-photography-award-shelley-niro-exhibition-at-contact/ 

With comparable confidence, Thomas’ Attitude (fig. 2) from 1998 indexes the continued presence of Iroquois people (25).  The image contrasts a photograph of the artist’s son,  Bear, with a reproduction of Curtis’ portrait of a Piegan man likely named Iron Breast (26). Thomas has stated that “[Curtis] employed ethnography as an authoritative voice, while using photography to tell a fictional story”(27).  While Iron Breast is adorned with likely staged props,  Bear disrupts expectations of Indigenous appearance with casual Westernized clothing (28).  Further,  Curtis’ image erases any reference to time through a black sheet behind the subject. In a direct rebuttal, Thomas’ son is situated against a cement building and urban infrastructure (29).  His wide stance claims the space, and the title, Attitude, suggests confidence in this asserted presence.  Both Thomas’ and Niro’s images suggest that if any truth is inherent to photo-colonial images that reinforce the denial of coevalness, then this photographic authority is also contained within these images of Haudenosaunee peoples in the contemporary. 

Figure 2. Jeffrey Thomas, Attitude, silver gelatin prints, 1998. Accessed at http://jeff thomas.ca/publication-docs/aboriginal-interventions-into-the-photographic-archive.pdf

This unsettling of the photo-colonial archive as a site of objective truth facilitates the activation of archival work as a fluid source, and the artists place these records in dialogue with their own work (30).  Thomas speaks directly to this tendency, stating that his “dream is to make the archive an active site of engagement”(31).  While Attitude showcases a critique of Curtis’ collection, Thomas also works to re-contextualize the collection by juxtaposing it with an image of his son. Thomas recognizes some value in Curtis’ preservation of “powerful First Nations personalities,” and has raised questions regarding the ways in which we might uncover their voices (32).  Notably, the images are arranged with Thomas’ photograph on the left, and Curtis’ image on the right. Since Western cultures typically read left to right, this placement resists the reading of these images as a before-and-after sequence, with Bear showcasing a modern Indigenous man, and Iron Breast signifying an outdated representation (33).  Instead, Thomas arranges the images counter to their date of creation, facilitating an active dialogue surrounding Indigenous identity and history. Thomas has stated that his work “has been concerned with building a bridge between the historical images of Aboriginal people … and the present-day Aboriginal world”(34). Through this comparison, Thomas is revitalizing the archive and bridging these worlds. 

While Niro’s image, Red Heels Hard, lacks a direct photographic comparison, it contains a poignant reference to colonial representations of Haudenosaunee peoples, situating them in dialogue with her work. Notably, the image is taken in front of a monument commemorating  Joseph Brant, a Mohawk military leader for the British whose Mohawk name is thought to be  Thayendanegea (35). Brant occupies space in the colonial archive, having been written about and painted extensively, sometimes referred to as “the most famous American Indian” (36).  By including handwriting at the bottom of the image reading, “but this is where we will stay forever and for thee we stand on guard,” Niro references Canadian nationalism and potentially Brant’s military service. Further, the monument includes a tomahawk, which Mohawk scholar Scott Manning Stevens explains is deeply linked to stereotypes of Haudenosaunee people as “cruel and warlike,” a myth that has facilitated settler violence (37).  Niro’s intentions in including the monument are not clearly stated. Yet, through contrasting this highly revered Mohawk warrior with three fun-loving Mohawk women, Niro may be asking who the colonial archive has erased, and how one might challenge its myths (38).  Niro excludes the majority of the monument including the tomahawk, placing emphasis instead on her sisters, perhaps as replacements of Brant’s effigy. However, the partial inclusion of this monument calls attention to the value of re-signifying colonial representations rather than simply doing away with them. Therefore, these artists liberate both Haudenosaunee subjects and archival representations from their status as static emblems of history (29). 

Both Thomas’ Attitude and Niro’s Red Heels Hard challenge and reclaim the notion of photographic truth to unbind Haudenosaunee subjects and archives from the past and effectively fuel a continued dialogue (40).  With asserted confidence and flair, these artists reclaim the storytelling power of the archive and unsettle its stagnant authority. 

Endnotes
1 Sherry Farrell Racette, “Returning Fire, Pointing the Canon: Aboriginal Photography as Resistance,” in The  Cultural Work of Photography in Canada, eds. Carol Payne and Andrea Kunard (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s  University Press, 2011), 79.  

2 Racette, “Returning Fire,” 79. 

3 Okwui Enwezor, Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art. (New York: Steidl, 2008), 12. 4 Enwezor, Archive Fever, 11.  

5 Carol Payne and Jeffrey Thomas, “Aboriginal Interventions into the Photographic Archives: A Dialogue between  Carol Payne and Jeffrey Thomas,” Visual Resources 18, no. 2 (2002): 114.  

6 Payne and Thomas, “Aboriginal Interventions,”: 114. 

7 Racette, “Returning Fire,” 71.  

8 Pauline Wakeham, “Celluloid Salvage: Edward S. Curtis’ Experiments with Photography and Film,” in Taxidermic  Signs: Reconstructing Aboriginality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 103. 9Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 2. 

10 Matthew Ryan Smith, “The Archive in Contemporary Indigenous Art,” First American Art Magazine, 2016, 26. 11 Wakeham “Celluloid Salvage,” 121 

12 Scott Manning Stevens, “Collecting Haudenosaunee Art from the Modern Era,” Arts 9, no. 2 (2020): 2. 13 Bruce Elliot Johansen and Barbara Alice Mann, Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee (Santa Barbara: Greenwood  Publishing Group, 2000), vii.  

14 Johansen and Mann, Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee, vii.  

15 Racette, “Returning Fire,” 79.  

16 Racette, “Returning Fire,” 70.  

17 Racette, “Returning Fire,” 79.  

18 Payne and Thomas, “Aboriginal Interventions,”: 117.  

19 Racette, “Returning Fire,” 84. 

20 Lawrence Abbott, “Interviews with Loretta Todd, Shelley Niro and Patricia Deadman,” The Canadian Journal of  Native Studies 18, no. 2 (1998): 349.  

21 In the Making - Shelley Niro directed by Chelsea McMullan (2018: CBC Gem), online video.  22 McMullan, In the Making, 7:45.  

23 Abbott, “Interviews,” 356.  

24 Abbott, “Interviews,” 354.  

25 Payne and Thomas, “Aboriginal Interventions,”: 119.  

26 Payne and Thomas, “Aboriginal Interventions,”: 120.  

27 Payne and Thomas, “Aboriginal Interventions,”: 116.  

28 Andrea N. Walsh, “Visualizing Histories: Experiences of Space and Place in Photographs by Greg Staats and  Jeffrey Thomas,” Visual Studies 17, no. 1 (2002): 45.  

29 Payne and Thomas, “Aboriginal Interventions,”: 121. 

30 Smith, “The Archive,” 31.  

31 Payne and Thomas, “Aboriginal Interventions,”: 123.  

32 Payne and Thomas, “Aboriginal Interventions,”: 113.  

33 Trista E. Friedrich and Lorin J. Elias, “The Write Bias: The Influence of Native Writing Direction on Aesthetic  Preference Biases,” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 10, no. 2 (2016): 128. 34 Payne and Thomas, “Aboriginal Interventions,”: 110. 

35 Abbott, “Interviews,” 349.  

36 Isabel Thompson Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 1743-1807: Man of Two Worlds (New York: Syracuse University Press,  1984), ix.  

37 Scott Manning Stevens, “Tomahawk: Materiality and Depictions of the Haudenosaunee,” Early American  Literature 53, no. 2 (2018): 475.  

38 Anonymous, “Thayendanegea,” The United States Magazine, and Democratic Review (1837-1851), Oct. 1838. 39 Payne and Thomas, “Aboriginal Interventions,”: 120. 

40 Smith, “The Archive in Contemporary Indigenous Art,” 30.

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