Andrew Smith Gallery is pleased to present Part I of an important two-part exhibit of 19th and 20th century Indian portraiture from the Kurt Koegler Collection. Kurt Koegler was a New York attorney who began collecting photographs of American Indians in 1979. At the time of his death in 1996 he had amassed an extraordinary collection. Andrew Smith Gallery began representing his estate in 1999. Koegler's collection is impressive historically and artistically. The photographs date from the Civil War to 1930, a time of enormous change as the frontier disappeared and government policies forced many Indians from their homelands. Koegler collected photographs by such 19th century pioneers of photography as Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan, and John K. Hillers, along with early 20th century artists Roland Reed, Karl Moon and others.

Andrew Smith Gallery is exhibiting the Koegler Collection in two parts. Part I of the exhibit opens Memorial Day Weekend and continues through July 6, 2000. It features approximately twenty-five photographs made between 1905 and 1930, by Karl Moon, Frederick Monsen, Ansel Adams, Beverly Dobbs, Arnold Genthe, J.A. Johnson, Harriet Smith Pullen, and Roland Reed. These photographers endeavored to ennoble their subjects by envisioning them in an idealized past, as if the disruption of the nineteenth century had never occurred. Influenced by the Pictorial movement and Edward Curtis, artists like Karl Moon and Roland Reed strove for an expression of timeless beauty and drama in their portraits by using soft-focus, cropping, retouching, and other techniques, thus blending romanticism and reality. Ansel Adams, on the other hand, achieved the same effect through straight, clear photographs printed with his characteristic technical virtuosity.

Karl Moon (1879-1948), moved to Albuquerque, NM in 1903, and began photographing southwest Indians. His techniques of soft-focus views, cropping, vignetting, retouching, and even drawing on the finished print made him a vastly popular photographer during his lifetime. His work appeared
in magazines and was exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution. The Huntington Library in San Marino, Ca., has the major collection of his work. The portrait of Meguelito (Yah-otza-begey - Navajo Medicine Man), 1904, is a sepia toned silver print depicting Meguelito's smiling profile tilted toward the light. His silver squash blossom and heishi necklaces reflect the light while the rest of the image recedes in darkness.

Virtually nothing is known about the photographer J.A. Johnson, though his studio portrait of Spotted Elk, Sioux, 1908, shows that he was influenced by Pictorialism. Spotted Elk gazes directly at the camera. His handsome, alert face commands attention, despite his complicated costume. The eagle feathers above his head are printed in soft focus. Below his bandana Spotted Elk wears a shirt studded with silver and a fur vest decorated with round mirrors. Below this is a bone breast shield. Koegler assembled the largest group of Johnson's work extant.

The son of a farmer, Beverly Dobbs (1868-?) learned photography in Lincoln, Nebraska and later ran a gallery in Bellingham, Washington. In 1900, he moved to Nome, Alaska to search for gold and while there photographed the Eskimos and the Seward Peninsula. In 1904, he was awarded a gold medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition for his Eskimo photographs. Four young Alaskan Women, 1903, is a charming and unaffected portrait of four young Eskimo on a beach dressed in their finest fur-trimmed garments and smiling for the camera. One woman wears hightop lace-up boots instead of moccasins.

Harriet Smith Pullen (1860-1947) was a widow with four children who came to Skagway, Alaska in the Gold Rush of 1897. An enterprising woman, she opened a restaurant and ran a small hotel to which she added a museum. She is credited with having made the photograph of Mrs. Stene-Tu, a Tlinget Belle, 1906. This large studio portrait utilizes conventional photographic devices of that era. The background is an undefined area of light and shadow. The woman has been posed with her head resting elegantly on her hand. Her upper body is strongly lit while her lower portion gradually disappears into darkness. But convention ends with the subject herself. Mrs. Stene-Tu's flowing hair is crowned by large horn-shaped prongs topped with white ermine. Her face is decorated with a thick diagonal stripe of dark paint and her nose is pierced with a round metal ring. She wears multiple trade bead necklaces, ornate bracelets, and her bare shoulders are draped with a striped blanket.

Frederick Monsen (1865-1929) was an explorer and surveyor who repeatedly visited and photographed American Indians of the Southwest until the years of the first World War. He lived and worked among the Southwest Indians from 1894 to 1895 and was the first to use a hand held camera in the field to create natural and unaffected images. His exquisite enlargements are considered among the finest of that era. Most of Monsen's work was destroyed in the San Francisco fire and earthquake of 1906, making it among the rarest of all great western photographers. Navajo Shepherd Boy, Canyon de Chelly, ca. 1910 is a spendid example of Monsen's ability to blend realism with artistic power. The barefoot boy with a grass switch in his hand sits on a rock looking down at the camera. The child's uncombed hair, worn clothing and somber expression convey much about his desert life, as does the treeless landscape and arid canyon wall behind him.

Part II of the Koegler exhibit opens August, 2000. It will feature photographs taken between 1859 and 1904, including rare Delegation photographs taken by photographers in Washington, D.C., works by Timothy O'Sullivan, Gertrude Kasebier and Alexander Gardner. Andrew Smith Gallery will be sending out additional press release information about that exhibit later this summer.

For more information please contact the Andrew Smith Gallery

Liz Kay