Indigenous Visual Artists and Photographers from Perpich Library

November 20, 2024

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, the library is showcasing some of our best books featuring historical and contemporary works of visual art and photography by Indigenous people.

All items on this list are available at the Perpich library. Click on titles for more information.

1. As We See It: Conversations with Native American Photographers by Suzanne Newman Fricke
Suzanne Newman Fricke invites readers to explore the work and careers of ten contemporary Native American photographers: Jamison Banks, Anna Hoover, Tom Jones, Larry McNeil, Shelley Niro, Wendy Red Star, Beverly Singer, Matika Wilber, William Wilson, and Tiffiney Yazzie. Inspired by As We See It, an exhibition of these artists’ work cocurated by Fricke in 2015, the book showcases the extraordinary achievements of these groundbreaking photographers.

2. Before and after the Horizon: Anishinaabe Artists of the Great Lakes by David Penney
This companion volume to an exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York reveals how Anishinaabe (also known in the United States as Ojibwe) artists have expressed the deeply rooted spiritual and social dimensions of their relations with the Great Lakes region. Featuring 70 color images of visually powerful historical and contemporary works, Before and after the Horizon is the only book to consider the work of Anishinaabe artists overall and to discuss 500 years of Anishinaabe art history.

3. Dreaming in Indian: Contemporary Native American Voices by Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth Leatherdale
In a graphics-intensive, magazine-style format, 50 Indigenous contributors from Canada and the United States present visual art (photography, drawings, paintings), poems, interviews, and remembrances to show what it means to be Indigenous today. Topics range from stereotypes and discrimination to discussions of the contributors’ careers in activism, modeling, music, visual arts, and more.

4. Dreaming Our Futures: Ojibwe and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ Artists and Knowledge Keepers curated by Brenda J. Child and Howard Oransky with Christopher Pexa
Features twenty-nine Native painters, primarily Dakota and Ojibwe, who live in the Upper Midwest region or have family or tribal connections there. The artists represent a range of generations, professional experience, and genres, and their work embraces traditional, historical, contemporary, and conceptual themes. Along with full-color reproductions of works by each painter, this volume includes bilingual artist statements, biographies, essays (on the representation of Indigenous people in historical context, and storytelling and the creative process), and new scholarship on several specific artists.

5. Early Days: Indigenous Art from the McMichael edited by Bonnie Devine, John Geoghegan, and Sarah Milroy
A landmark publication bringing together more than seventy voices illuminating the rich array of Indigenous art held by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. Under the editorial direction of Anishinaabe artist and scholar Bonnie Devine, Early Days gathers the insights of myriad Indigenous cultural stakeholders, informing us on everything from goose hunting techniques, to the history of Northwest Coast mask making, to the emergence of the Woodland style of painting and printmaking, to the challenges of art making in the Arctic, to the latest developments in contemporary art by Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island.

6. In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now edited by Jill Ahlberg Yohe, Jaida Grey Eagle, Casey Riley
With incisive contributions by individual curatorial council members, In Our Hands presents Native photography in three thematic sections that underscore the following: Native people are present in all facets of American life; their role is transformative in the larger society; and their view of, and connections to, the land and all living things is holistic and fundamental. The publication features 130 photographic works by Native photographers from the late nineteenth century to the present, ranging from documentary photographs to family snapshots to conceptual works.

7. An Indigenous Present edited by Jeffrey Gibson and Jenelle Porter
This landmark volume is a gathering of Native North American contemporary artists, musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, architects, writers, photographers, designers, and more. Conceived by Jeffrey Gibson, a renowned artist of Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee descent, An Indigenous Present presents an increasingly visible and expanding field of Indigenous creative practice. It centers individual practices, while acknowledging shared histories, to create a visual experience that foregrounds diverse approaches to concept, form, and medium as well as connection, influence, conversation, and collaboration.

8. Mni Sota: Reflections of Time and Place by Dyani White Hawk
This extraordinary traveling exhibit showcases the innovation and beauty of Native American artists whose ingenuity promotes cultural continuity. The artists of Mni Sota provide stunning examples of ways in which Native artists of the Minnesota region continue to embrace the contemporary while supporting tradition.

9. Native American Clothing: An Illustrated History by Theodore Brasser
Native Americans crafted beautiful clothing out of skins, pigment, quills, and sinew. The collection of photographs in this outstanding reference celebrates this decorative genius. Many of the 300 photographs from more than 60 leading museums and private collections have never been published previously. The book describes the clothing in fascinating detail, from moccasins and tunics to sashes, bags and ceremonial and burial costumes.

10. Through a Native Lens: American Indian Photography by Nicole Dawn Strathman
In this richly illustrated volume, Nicole Dawn Strathman explores how Indigenous peoples throughout the United States and Canada appropriated the art of photography and integrated it into their lifeways. The photographs she analyzes date to the first one hundred years of the medium, between 1840 and 1940. To account for Native activity both in front of and behind the camera, the author divides her survey into two parts. Part I focuses on Native participants, including such public figures as Sarah Winnemucca and Red Cloud, who fashioned themselves in deliberate ways for their portraits. Part II examines Native professional, semiprofessional, and amateur photographers.

All items on this list are available at the Perpich Library.

Title descriptions are provided by Amazon and/or the publisher.