Formal vs. Informal Portraits
Gertrude Käsebier's Indian Portraits
Video Transcription
In thinking about researching the Gertrude Käsebier collection of Sioux Indian portraits, I thought about how I might put into separate categories for our viewers and researchers the kind of portraits that she took. What themes, what subject lines could we explore as we took the collection as a whole and tried to turn it into a digital project where scholars could think about the formal portraits, the informal portraits, the outdoor portraits, the drawings that were made for her, and also the documents that developed out of this portrait session? It's really curated in a way that is subjective. I'm sure if someone else was doing this same work the lines might be blurred especially when we start to define informal portraiture.
The Indian men working with Käsebier and thinking about how she wanted them to be photographed versus how they were most comfortable being photographed really delineates for me part of the definition of formal to informal portraiture.
The formal portraits that we include in this project are ones that I would say these Indian men were probably very used to. So they would as chief be wearing the war bonnet or headdress that represented their role within the tribe, their position, their position of respect amongst the others, and also how they were represented when they were performing in the show as the leaders of their community. Very often they're seated straight-on with the camera, looking at the camera. Sometimes they're beautiful profile portraits of these men looking very distinguished and showing off, again, Käsebier's great respect for them.
And then we turn to some that I see as informal. Some of the men are seated on the floor, or they've decided to wrap themselves in their blankets—beautiful blankets some of which even you see the American flag motif in the beadwork that shows in them. But they're protected, they're covered—there's a bit of a distance between the photographer and the sitter in some of those where they're gazing off in a way that you don't know what they might be thinking, but it's a moment that Käsebier wants to capture.
Video produced and edited by, Rebecca Wingo, University of Nebraska—Lincoln
Videography, Jeremy Goodman, Buffalo Bill Historical Center
Featuring, Michelle Delaney, Smithsonian Institution
The William F. Cody Archive
codyarchive.org
2013
Senior Digital Editor, Douglas Seefeldt, Ball State University
