Picturing Indians : photographic encounters and tourist fantasies in H.H. Bennett's Wisconsin Dells / Steven D. Hoelscher.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hoelscher, Steven D.

Series:

Studies in American thought and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bennett, H. H. (Henry Hamilton), 1843-1908.

Ho-Chunk Indians--Portraits.

Ho-Chunk Indians.

Portrait photography--Wisconsin--Wisconsin Dells--History--19th century.

Portrait photography.

Bennett, H. H. (Henry Hamilton), 1843-1908--Criticism and interpretation.

Bennett, H. H.

Criticism and interpretation.

History.

Wisconsin--Wisconsin Dells.

Genre:

Portraits.

Physical Description:

xxi, 194 pages : illustrations, maps ; 27 cm.

Place of Publication:

Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, [2008]

Summary:

Today a Tourist Mecca, the area now known as the Wisconsin Dells was once a wilderness-and a gathering place for the region's Native peoples, the Ho-Chunk, who for centuries migrated to this part of the Wisconsin River for both sustenance and spiritual renewal. By the late 1800s their numbers had dwindled through displacement or forcible removal, and it was this smaller band that caught the attention of photographer Henry Hamilton Bennett. Having built his reputation on his photographs of the Dells' steep gorges and fantastic rock formations, H. H. Bennett now turned his camera upon the Ho-Chunk themselves, and thus began the many-layered relationship unfolded by Steven D. Hoelscher in Picturing Indians: Photographic Encounters and Tourist Fantasies in H. H. Bennett's Wisconsin Dells.

Hoelscher traces the development of this relationship through letters, diaries, financial records, guidebooks, and periodicals of the day. He places Bennett within the context of contemporary artists and photographers of American Indians and examines the receptions of this legacy by the Ho-Chunk today. In the final chapter, he juxtaposes Bennett's depictions of Native Americans with the work of present-day Ho-Chunk photographer Tom Jones, who documents the lives of his own people with a subtlety and depth fore-shadowed, a century ago, in the flickers of irony, humor, and pride conveyed by his Ho-Chunk ancestors as they posed before the lens of a white photographer.

Contents:

Prologue: Photographic Encounters 3

1 Contact Zones: American Indians, Tourism, and Photography 9

2 "Viewing" Indians and Landscape in Nineteenth-Century Wisconsin 41

3 Ho-Chunk Removals, Returns, and Survivance 55

4 Visual Dimensions of Bennett's Ho-Chunk Photographs 63

5 Photographic Practices as Profit-Driven Exchanges 101

6 The Changing Political Economy of Indian Photography and Art 111

Epilogue: Picturing Ho-Chunk Today 137.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-182) and index.

ISBN:

9780299226008

029922600X

9780299226046

0299226042

OCLC:

223848082