Shaping Perceptions

The intentions of both Curtis and Neidich are surprisingly similar when you pare them down to the basic idea. Both photographers wanted to change what they thought of as a negative public opinion about Native Americans.

Curtis was being paid to document the vanishing culture of the Indians. This allowed him to try to change the public view of Indians from violent and lawless people to a noble people with their own distinct culture. Unfortunately, in order to change public opinion, he went to the other extreme of the opinion spectrum and created the ideal Indian culture. He removed all traces of western culture from his photos and paid the Indians to pose in costumes. Even though it is now known that a lot of what he ‘documented’ was false, Curtis transformed the Indians’ image from the violent savage to the ‘noble’ savage.

Ironically, Neidich had pretty much set out to partially undo that change. He views the ideal Native American culture as something that detracted from the actual culture of the Native Americans, and as a contributor to the sanitation of history. He wanted to educate people about what actually happened in interactions between the Native Americans and the English settlers. He mostly did this from the Indians point of view. He used staged pictures depicting Native Americans being shot or similarly injured by the settlers. Neidich doesn’t want to deny that the Native Americans had a proud heritage, but he wants to acknowledge that they were as flawed as we were, just less powerful in the end.

I prefer the works of Neidich because they are trying to bring a more historical prespective to the fore. He doesn’t claim that his photos were actually taken back then, but he does try to make them more true to the facts.