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FROM THE KURT KOEGLER COLLECTION PART II 1860 - 1905 August 4 - September 15, 2000 |
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Andrew Smith Gallery is pleased to present Part II 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. By the time of his death in 1996 he had amassed one of the most comprehensive collections of Indian portraiture. Andrew Smith Gallery began representing his estate in 1999. Koegler's collection is historically and artistically impressive. The photographs date from 1862 to 1930, a time of enormous change as the frontier disappeared and government policies forced many Indians from their homelands. Part II of the Koegler Exhibit focuses by works by 19th century pioneers of photography including John K. Hillers, Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan, George Trager, Zeno Schindler, Will Soule, Charles Lummis, Gertrude S. Käsebier, Ben Wittick, and others. On exhibit are portraits of powerful Indian chiefs like Red Cloud who came to Washington, D.C. to negotiate treaties, Indians who were executed after massacres, including Tehedo Necha who was hanged following the Minnesota Massacre of 1862, and Indians who died in battle like Yellow Bird, the Sioux medicine man whose frozen corpse was photographed the day after he was killed at Wounded Knee. Also exhibited are scenes of Southwest Pueblos by Charles Lummis, and portraits of Sioux Indians working in Cody's Wild West Show who were photographed in New York by the greatest woman photographer of the Photo-Secession, Gertrude Käsebier. The exhibit continues through September 15, 2000.
By the time photography was invented Indians had been a compelling subject for portraiture for three and a half centuries. By the early 1850s photography had begun to replace painting and drawing as a means of recording the delegations of Indian chiefs who traveled to Washington to negotiate treaties. In 1852 the first delegation photographs were made, often at the request of the chiefs themselves who wanted to pictorially record their visit. In 1867 the Smithsonian Institution initiated a program to photograph all Indians who came with delegations to Washington. The Koegler collection includes a portrait of Red Cloud, the great chief of the Ogalala Dakota. Red Cloud proved to be a formidable opponent to the United States government when he refused to attend negotiations at Fort Laramie until the army had abandoned its forts along the Powder River. His tactics forced the army to abandon the Bozeman Trail in 1868. In 1880 Red Cloud was photographed in Washington by Charles Milton Bell (1848-1893), a Washington based photographer who had worked with William Henry Jackson to produce a catalog of Indian portraits. Bell eventually became owner of Bell & Brothers, the firm that took over the delegation work in the 1870s. In the albumen portrait, Red Cloud sits upright in a chair looking relaxed and confident. He holds a cane given to him by Washington officials and wears a magnificient fringed tunic. His long hair is embellished with a single eagle feather. To suggest a natural setting Bell used his favorite props; artificial rocks and a painted landscape backdrop. During the Indian Wars of the second half of the nineteenth century the slow-shuttered cameras could not capture actual battle scenes between the U.S. Army and hostile Indians. However, photographers did make portraits of nearly all the leaders on both sides of the wars, as well as the battle victims. George ("Gus") Trager, came to America from Germany in 1876 and was working as a photographer in Chadron, Nebraska. On December 30, 1891 he was the first to record the massacre of the Sioux at Wounded Knee battlefield. Of the eleven photographs taken by Trager that day the most chilling is The Medicine Man taken at the Battle of Wounded Knee, S.D. The subject is the Miniconjou Sioux medicine man, Yellow Bird, who had assured his companions that their special Ghost Dance shirts would repel the bullets fired by the calvary. Trager photographed Yellow Bird's frozen body amid others who fell in battle. The albumen print shows the medicine man died violently with his hands raised toward his head and his rifle leaning against him. Another rare photograph is a salt print from the Whitney Studio of St. Paul, Minnesota taken in 1862. When he was photographed in 1862, the Santee Sioux, Te-He-Do-Ne-Cha (One who Forbids his House), had been arrested for his participation in the Minnesota massacre of 1862. The massacre, which killed 700 settlers and 100 soldiers, occurred because the Indians had been denied money pledged them by treaty and were starving. A military commission sentenced 303 Sioux to death by hanging, but Abraham Lincoln overturned most of the sentences. On December 26, 1862, thirty-eight Santees were executed, including Tehedo Necha. At the time he was photographed, Tehedo Necha was under guard. To emphasize his role in the massacre, the photographer had his subject hold a long rifle in one hand, and a powderhorn or knife in his other. In the oval framed portrait, Tehedo Necha, cloaked in a Hudson Bay blanket gazes directly at the camera with a somber and unflincing expression. As the Indians were driven from their homelands and onto reservations, photographers had to travel long distances to photograph what remained of the old way of life in places like Hopi, Arizona and the New Mexican pueblos. Charles Lummis (1859-1928) is an example of a photographer intent on showing the reality of Indian life at the turn of the century. Traveling on foot from Cincinnati, Ohio to Los Angeles, California in 1884-85, Lummis became fascinated by the Indians of the Southwest. He photographed them repeatedly and lived at Isleta Pueblo between 1888 and 1892. Back in Los Angeles Lummis published several books about the Indians before returning to New Mexico to work as a magazine editor and poet. Through his writing and photography he tried to raise awarness about the wrongs Native Americans had suffered. Lummis often used the cyanotype process, a printing process based on the light sensitivity of iron salts. Several Lummis prints are on exhibit, including a Prussian-blue cyanotype taken of foot races at Isleta Pueblo in 1891. The most celebrated woman photographer of her era, Gertrude Käsebier (1852-1934) had raised her family before taking up photography in the late 1880s. In 1897 she opened a studio in New York and became a founding member of the Photo-Secession. She is especially known for her exquisite photographs of women and children, but she also made spendid portraits of Indian subjects. In 1898, when William F. Cody brought his Wild West Show to New York, Käsebier photographed the Sioux Indian, Samuel Lone Bear. Her considerable powers as a portraitist are revealed in this elegant platinum print of a young man wearing traditional clothing. Käsebier seated her subject in front of a curtain backdrop. His long hair and relaxed hand convey serenity, but the expression in his eyes is distant, as if he is thinking of things far away. These and many other photographs from this fascinating historical period are on display through September 15, 2000. For more information please contact the Andrew Smith Gallery Liz Kay |
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