Portraits of Native Americans

As recently as 90 years ago, it was not uncommon for organizers of world fairs or even museum curators to scour the world looking for "exotic" people to exhibit at their respective expositions and institutions. At one such fair, The Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904, Charles H. Carpenter, chief photographer of the Field Museum in Chicago, photographed what would become his "magnum opus", a collection of over 800 photographs of Native Americans. In an effort to preserve the visually rich moments captured as a result of this peculiar cultural piece of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, "Portraits of Native Americans" gathers together 23 black and white photographs from this prodigious collection. Carpenter photographed the Native Americans on the fairgrounds as the tourists saw them and against simple studio backdrops, where photographer and subject achieved an intimacy that elevated these pictures to art. Although the ways in which American Indians and non-Indians view each other have greatly changed since these photographs were taken, these images are an evocation of their time.