On those occasions when making pictures of people that do not share our culture or skin color, the appropriation of an individual's likeness may be perceived as invasive or even offensive. Cultural sensitivity in making photographs means being able to recognize and act according to the expectations others have hold us accountable for.
History is replete with examples illustrating the role photography has played in the colonization of race and culture around the world. Photography is not the benign technology many people think it is. Although the photographic image is clearly an excellent medium of self-expression, it can also be one of oppression. Photography has been used to identify, classify, label, order, and generalize groups of people different from the dominant colonizing power. Photographers have and will continue to exploit "difference" in order to capitalize on anything that appears exotic or alien.
My goal here is to discuss how photographers approach and re-present people of difference - be it race, ethnicity, gender, culture, or religion. I want to consider the possibility of making an image that does not stereotype or make a visual cliche of what non-Indians think of when they see an Indian. Is it possible to visually record the integrity, strength, compassion, pride, and persistence of an individual in a single image without reducing his or her humanity to an object?
Philip Deloria observes that people view images based on pre-existing expectations. "Broad cultural expectations are both the products and the tools of domination and that they are an inheritance that haunts each and every one of us." Deloria believes that in a global mass-mediated culture we are subjected to expectations. Therefore, it is critical to think about the asymmetrical ways in which we go about re-presenting others in the media. How many magazine cover have we seen in Sept. 11, that reproduce the cultural stereotype of people from the Middle East as terrorists. How many movies have we see that depict Native people as savages. In other words, we must learn to question the expectations of what we and how the representations we make influence others.
Brent Florendo, co-director of the Native American Studies Program at Southern Oregon University.
The identity of Native people in this country is shaped by misconception and racial bias. Contemporary society is burdened by generalizations and racial stereotypes that have allowed a dominant Euro-American way of thinking about "Indianness."
As Alexandra Harmon suggests, "Reified notions of Indianess have endured because many people have had reasons to promote them." For centuries, non-Indians have have used material greed and racial superiority as ways for rationalizing the obliteration of Native American culture and traditions. Once portrayed as blood-thirsty and heathenish savages, contemporary culture has revised perception of indigenous people as more spiritual and naturalistic. Anthony Laying comments, "The usual colonial view of Indians
portrayed them as godless heathens, neither civilized nor prepared for
salvation. Today, however, we are told that they were and still are
deeply into an admirable spirituality." In the media stereotypes of Native American prevail in contemporary culture. We are taught from an early age to see the differences rather than the commonalities between us.
Any non-Indian re-representation of "Indianness" in modern society must take into account the influence of past media practices which have fostered crude and prejudicial misinterpretations of indigenous peoples as primitive. At the same time, re-presentations. The photographer must confront his or her own cultural assumptions about Native people so that they may attempt to move beyond making stereotypical likeness which denigrate "Indianness" to the form of cliché. Outsiders unwittingly ascribe ideological values onto the pictures they make of Native people as overly romantic generalizations. Photographer, then, must acknowledge the tensions between insider self-representation and outsider ascription placed upon the re-presentations.
Many Native people live in two worlds -- one world rich in traditional tribal culture and history, and another conflicted by the individualistic consumer culture of our times.�Linda Haverty Rugg suggests that photographs can either be construed as evidence of existence or constructions
masquerading as fact. There is a complex spatial-temporal dynamic to photography as it forms a bridge between the past and the presence. Re-presenting a non-White culture often fails to portray the complexity of the social, historical, cultural, and political dynamics that resides below the aesthetics of an image.
Resources:
"Wanted: More histories of Indian identity," by Alexandra Harmon, in A Companion to American Indian History, Eds., Philip J. Deloria and Neal Salisbury. Oxford: Blackwell. 2002.
"American Indians: Trading Old Stereotypes for New," by Anthony Laying. USA Today, July 2000.
"Moving toward Visual Literacy: Photography as a Language of Teacher Inquiry," by�
Mary Jane Moran and Deborah W. Tegano, in Early Childhood
Research & Practice, Vol. 7, 2005.
Picturing Ourselves: Photography and Autobiography by Linda Haverty Rugg; University of Chicago Press, 1997.