Contemperary Native American Culture


  • Photographer
    Breanna Klamm
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Date of Photograph
    March 2016
  • Technical Info
    Gum Bichromate Prints

These photographs are created digital composites using Photoshop. Negatives are then printed and used to create Gum Bichromate prints. This is an intensive 19th century color printing process. Each image depicts a Native Indian legend. These photographs are more than just illustrations though. In each image contemporary social justice issues are addressed. They draw the viewer's attention to issues that surround the Native communities.

Story

Social injustice is extensive in Native American daily life. Society has tried to first eradicate, segregate, assimilate, eliminate, and now appropriate Native Indian culture. Despite all this, the culture has survived and is a living contemporary nation. The people have adapted to modern life. Life as a native is not the stereotype of Indians that western culture has created.

My goal as an artist is to use photography to illuminate these issues, and make the viewer aware of the indigenous culture from the land they live on. I focus on a 19th century printing process called gum bichromate printing. It was beloved by the pictorialist in the late 1800s for its painterly quality. The Native Indian image is associated with feelings of nostalgia and has always been tied to19th century processes. The color combined with a hand printed image makes a new statement about the culture that original monochromatic photographs could not make.

I focus on legends from different cultures depicting the stories in a new way, from a new perspective. I am interested in the overlap of western culture and the indigenous culture and how the culture has adapted to be contemporary. It is in these gray areas where the viewers can find themselves questioning their current beliefs about First Nation cultures.

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