The Dubuque Museum of Art is hosting an event showcasing the works of Diné (Navajo) artist, Will Wilson, in conversation with 20th-century photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952).
Wilson is an associate professor of Photography and Media at UT Austin in Texas. His journey in photography started when he was 15 living in Tuba City Arizona on Diné land attending a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school.
“I fell in love with photography in high school and just loved sort of the alchemic nature of it, that was analog photography, of course, back then,” Wilson said in an interview with WVIK. “I focused on my friends and family on the Navajo Nation and people seem to respond to those images. So it sort of reinforced my excitement about the media.”
He moved away from Arizona when he was 15 to attend a prep school on the east coast where he was able to hone his skills. His work merges analog and digital photography.
“I'm using this process called wet plate or wet plate collodion,” Wilson said. “You're essentially making your own film. And I'm shooting with a large format camera. And there's a lot of reasons I do it. It's really beautiful. It's a wonderful thing to experience and see and not a lot of people get to experience that in this day and age.’
“And so with the project, the Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange, one of the things that wet plate requires is a dark room. It's called wet plate because the emulsion has to remain wet during the process, otherwise you won't get an image if it dries out. So you have about a 15 minute window from when you make your film to go make your exposure and then go back into the dark room to develop it. And so it's a restriction, but it's also an opportunity because I have the dark room with me, I get to share that aspect of it.”
Wilson said using wet plate collodion connects to its original use in late 19th- and early 20th-century photography in documenting the Navajo Nation and other Indigenous Peoples.
“The analog also comes into play because it immediately, I think, transports people in time, just like visually, in terms of sort of thinking about histories. The process was sort of the photography process of the day from about 1850 to 1880,” Wilson said. “And for example, the first photographs of the Navajo people or Diné were taken with this process. And it actually happened during a traumatic moment in our history known as the Long Walk, where Navajo folks were subject to scorched earth campaign by the U.S. government, rounded up, forced to march during the winter, like three or 400 miles to this place called Fort Sumner or Bosque Redondo, or in Navajo, it's referred to as the Hwéeldi meaning the place of suffering. And it was originally meant to be sort of the Navajo reservation, but it didn't work out. And because of the perseverance of the folks who were there, they were able to negotiate a treaty that enabled them to return to their original homelands.”
This aspect of photography’s history includes Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952), who embarked on documenting Indigenous Peoples in 1907 and continued for over 20 years.
“Curtis set out to photograph as many Indigenous nations west of the Mississippi as he could. I think in the end, he photographed 88 different tribes or nations,” Wilson said. “And sort of one of the ideas behind the project for him, I think, was this notion of what was happening to people in the face of colonization, in the face of land theft and just the transfer, cultural transformations that were happening. I think he thought, and that was sort of the take of the day that the Native Americans were vanishing or the real, authentic Native Americans were vanishing. And he wanted to sort of capture that photographically, folks, before they assimilated. And I think that's one of the flaws of that project. I mean, Indigenous folks have always kind of embraced new technologies and cultures. Of course, they evolve, and they transform. And I think my project in some ways is framed as a response to that.”
Stacy Peterson is the curatorial director at the Dubuque Museum of Art. She says she first noticed Wilson’s photography when the Art Bridges Foundation, a part of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, was showing his work across the country.
“They [Art Bridges] organize traveling exhibitions, and we have worked with them in the past. And when I saw that they had organized this exhibition of this major contemporary Native American photographer who was responding to Edward Curtis's work, which is a major part of our collection, that totally piqued my interest,” Peterson said in an interview with WVIK.
“Curtis was from Wisconsin. He's a Midwesterner. He's from this area,” Peterson said. “So what I think is really important about what Will Wilson is doing is that he is coming at this or continuing this recording and documenting of contemporary Native Americans from a Native American perspective, an Indigenous perspective. And so he's just helping us. It's important to understand the effect that this body of work has had over time and over 100 years, and how it's important to bring in more voices, especially voices that are directly connected to the people that are portrayed in these images. So thinking about how someone is portrayed and who's doing the portraying, the photographing, these are all important points that are contrasted well and visually seen in the exhibition.”
Peterson shares that the museum first showed Curtis’ work back in 1905, starting as a subscription partnership with the Carnegie-Stout Public Library. By 2000, the museum had acquired the full collection from the Carnegie-Stout Public Library.
“So it's a full, complete set. There's 20 volumes, and the volumes consist of a book and a portfolio of large format photogravures, which is a type of print. And those are what you see on exhibit in the gallery. And altogether, there are over 720 of those photogravure prints,” Peterson said.
Director of Learning and Engagement Ivonne Simmonds-Fals said the museum offers a program with local schools to provide learning opportunities and engage with art. She says over 700 students participated in discussions with their social studies and art classes regarding Wilson’s and Curtis’ work.
“We led a photography workshop where students brought an object that represented something meaningful to them and wrote an artist statement about it,” Simmonds-Fals said in an interview with WVIK. “They chose their pose, the color of their photograph, and how they wanted to be seen. It became a powerful way for them to learn about agency and self-representation.”
Those works are also on display in the museum’s lobby. Peterson said the exhibition is available for viewing through February 1st.
“And there's a great additional exhibition called Threads of Belonging, which includes some of the advisory team that helped us in the preparation and the planning for the exhibition. And so that is an amazing show. And these are only up for just a short time.”
The Dubuque Museum of Art, at 1000 Jackson Street, is holding In Conversation: Will Wilson on Friday, January 23rd from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Admission into the museum is $12, the exhibition and talk is included in the ticket price.
“I've kind of got this long form project that I'm doing that's sort of looking at abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation. I'm using drones to make aerial photography of these sites and cataloging them,” Wilson said. “There's over 500 known and assessed abandoned uranium mines. The vast majority of them haven't been remediated. And we're working on an app that will show you where you are in relation to these sites, these former mines. Some of them are, it's low level, but some of them are really hot still. You wouldn't want to spend much time there or let your animals, your livestock, eat or drink water in that vicinity. So that's sort of the thing that I've been in some way stuck on for a couple of years now. But you know, it's something that I get to go back and see my family and friends and the reservation, and it's just a beautiful landscape that's exciting to be roaming around on.’
“We're still here. We're doing important, creative things, like any other kind of community, we adapt and transform. That was sort of the impetus for getting the project started. But I think it's also always been thinking about photography a little more critically and just sharing this beautiful alchemic thing that I fell in love with a long time ago, and maybe an opportunity to think about what it means to have your portrait made in this day and age where everybody's got sort of a high-end photo camera in their pocket.”
To learn more about Wilson’s photography, visit his website.
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