The exhibition titled New Native Photography, 2011 is a collaboration between the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) and the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe. It features twenty-five new photographic works by nineteen innovative Native American artists from North America. The show explores the canons of international contemporary art from a Native American artistic perspective immersed in distinct issues of culture, art, philosophy, religion, personal and tribal identity, the environment, photographic description and interpretation as they exist in the global world of art and ideas of the 21st century.
The competition was open to Native American and First Nations photographers from federally recognized United States and Canadian tribes, nations, first nations and pueblos. Works for the exhibit were selected by Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie (Diné/Tuskegee), distinguished photographer and Director of the C.N. Gorman Museum and Associate Professor in Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis; and Larry McNeil (Tlingit/Nisgaa), a photographer and Professor of Art at Boise State University, along with Katherine Ware, Curator of Photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe.
Coinciding with Santa Fe's Indian Market, the exhibition introduced scores of collectors of Native American art to the vibrant field of Native photography, which until recently has not had the exposure it deserves for a variety of reasons. According to the museum's website, "The tremendous breadth of imagination and skill on view here gives just a hint of the participants' talent . . ." In large part the show was meant to educate the public about the exciting field of Native photography. According to Veronica Passalacqua, Curator at the C.N. Gorman Museum, "We need to expose collectors, curators and scholars, so we're trying to find ways to incorporate photography into Indian Market, because it is a very active and dynamic field in the canon of Native art as well into the larger art world."
"It's tremendously exciting to me to have the opportunity to get acquainted with some of the masters of Native American photography but also to be part of discovering new talent," said museum curator, Katherine Ware.
As Larry McNeil has pointed out, Native photography has been around longer than most people realize. "Of course, if you look at the history of Native photography, it goes back to the 19th century, almost to the inception of photography itself, for example with the Northwest Coast Tsimshian photographer Benjamin Haldane" and daguerreotypes made in the 1850s in upstate New York by Six Nations Wa-Wa-nosh [sic].
McNeil also acknowledges that the subtlety of content and the visual aesthetics underlying Native American art are often not understood by the art world or academia, and yet are extremely relevant and critical to American culture. The exhibit has done much to correct this.
(Ref: Paul Weideman "Hi-rez New Native Photography, 2011" in The New Mexican Pasatiempo, Aug. 19-25, 2011)