This fall, as debates around nationalism and borders in North America
reach a fever pitch, Aperture magazine releases "Native America," a
special issue about photography and Indigenous lives, guest edited by
the artist Wendy Red Star.
"Native America" considers the wide-ranging work of photographers and
lens-based artists who pose challenging questions about land rights,
identity and heritage, and histories of colonialism. Several
contributors revisit or reconfigure photographic archives--from writer
Rebecca Bengal's look at the works of Richard Throssel and Horace
Poolaw, to artist Duane Linklater's intervention in a 1995 issue of
Aperture, "Strong Hearts," the magazine's first volume devoted to
Native American photographers.
"I was thinking about young Native artists," says Red Star, "and what
would be inspirational and important for them as a road map."
That map spans a diverse array of intergenerational image-making,
counting as lodestars the meditative assemblages of Kimowan Metchewais
and installation works of Alan Michelson, the stylish self-portraits of
Martine Gutierrez, and the speculative mythologies of Karen Miranda
Rivadeneira and Guadalupe Maravilla. "Native America" also features
contributions by distinguished writers and curators, including
strikingly personal reflections from acclaimed poets Tommy Pico and
Natalie Diaz.
With additional essential contributions from Rebecca Belmore and Julian
Brave NoiseCat, as well as a portfolio from Red Star, the issue looks
into the historic, often fraught relationship between photography and
Native representation, while also offering new perspectives by emerging
artists who reimagine what it means to be a citizen in North America
today.
