Research Catalog

Title

Indian lives : a photographic record from the Civil War to Wounded Knee / Ulrich W. Hiesinger ; with a foreword by Joseph Medicine Crow.

Author

Hiesinger, Ulrich W., 1943-

Publication

Munich ; New York : Prestel, [1994], ©1994.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

139 pages : illustrations, 1 map; 31 cm

Summary

• This book presents a selection of powerful photographs of North American Indians, not simply as adjuncts to a historical discourse, but as visually compelling images in their own right.
• Coinciding with the beginnings of photography in the field, the period covered here - c. 1861 to 1890 - witnessed the end of unhindered traditional life for most Native Americans. Contemporary cameras captured that vanishing life with startling immediacy, a full generation before Edward Curtis began taking his famous series of photographs.
• The early photographers, among them such well-known figures as William Henry Jackson and Alexander Gardner, were clearly fascinated by the historical spectacle, at once romantic and brutal, unfolding before their eyes and documented its various aspects in both posed and candid shots.
• In an introduction the author places the photographs in the contexts of White American expansion and Indian culture, and discusses the means and aims of photography at the time. In a series of narratives, organized thematically around certain tribes and their activities or around outstanding historical events, Hiesinger goes on to provide a background for the interpretation of the individual images.
• Biographical notes on the photographers, a map, a chronology, and a bibliography complete a volume that brings the reader into intimate contact with a critical period of American history.

Subjects

• United States
• American Indians > Social life > History
• Photographers > West (U.S.) > History
• Indians of North America > Pictorial works

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 136-137).

Contents

Introduction: Photographing the Western Frontier, c. 1865-1890. Stanley J. Morrow: A Photographer's Journey -- Minnesota Uprising, 1862. Bitter Harvest -- Warriors. A Victim in Kansas. Chronicles of War: A Pawnee Buffalo Robe -- Plains Hunters. Tanning Buffalo Hides -- Council at Fort Laramie, 1868. Chief Red Cloud -- Pawnee Village. The Mandans -- Pueblos. Hopi Snake Dance -- Ghost Dancers and the Massacre at Wounded Knee, 1890. Sitting Bull. Plenty Horses.

ISBN

• 379131422X (Eng. ed.)
• 3791315165 (Ger. ed.) (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

gb 95020143

OCLC

• 31741084
• ocm31741084
• SCSB-14425667

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries