Exhibits > Tsutukwanah >
Image 3
3. Washakie, Chief of the Shoshones, Baker and
Johnson, ca. 1880 (Wind River Archives, Central Wyoming College)
 This
picture, by Baker and Johnson, photographers based out of Evanston,
Wyoming, is a studio portrait done at Fort Washakie. (The painted
curtain stops short of the frame on the right hand side revealing
the brick work of one of the Fort buildings.) Here, the photographer
has posed Washakie in manner befitting White society’s concept
of what a tribal leader should look like, a way that accorded with
Baker and Johnson’s perception both of Washakie’s position
and their personal impression of him.
Baker and Johnson did a number of portraits at Wind River that
were really designed for the White market. The practice of recording
trappings of wealth or prestige in a photograph, (represented, for
example, by warbonnets or ceremonial objects of Native American
cultures), or of presenting the subject in such a way that their
social position was made apparent, was originally an Anglo custom.
Early photos—showing people in every day dress or every day
life are harder to come by.
|
