Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
6-2025
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Art History
Advisor
Katherine Manthorne
Committee Members
Anna Indych-Lopez
Maria Antonella Pelizzari
Adrian Anagnost
Subject Categories
American Art and Architecture | History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology | Indigenous Studies | Latin American Languages and Societies | Modern Art and Architecture | Native American Studies
Keywords
indigeneity, history of photography, survivance, Edward S. Curtis, Eadweard Muybridge, Carlos Endara
Abstract
“Picturing Americans: Indigeneities and Modern Visualities (1873-1929)” examines the participation of Indigenous peoples in U.S. and Latin American lens-based media from the 1870s into the 1920s, exploring how these images shaped imaginaries about Indigenous peoples as well as Indigenous photographic agency and visuality in the hemisphere itself. By understanding modern visuality as a history of visual power and using interpretative approaches from NAIS, postcolonialism, and critical race art history, the dissertation argues that it was the participation of Indigenous sitters in lens-based media that enabled and popularized modern visuality across the Americas. The dissertation considers three case studies (one from North, Central, and South America) and includes an introduction and afterword.
The first chapter studies the 1875 images of Maya women produced by Eadweard Muybridge in Guatemalan coffee plantations, where the government forced many Maya communities to work without compensation. Applying the concept of “plantation visuality,” the chapter argues that Muybridge’s experience of the plantation system determined his approach to the human body and that his work in Animal Locomotion aimed to recreate in a Western, respectable context the visual power that he experienced in Guatemalan. The chapter also analyzes studio photographs of Maya elites, costumbrista watercolors, and other photographic records of the Guatemalan coffee industry.
The second chapter examines Edward S. Curtis’s Indian Picture Opera (1911-2), a multimedia show featuring live music, a lecture, and a projection of hand-painted lantern slides depicting various Native peoples from the Great Plains, Pacific Northwest, and Southwest. The chapter mobilizes the concepts of “imperial visuality” and visual sovereignty to demonstrate that the spectacle used the historization of Native North American communities as a locus of visual experimentation, all while unexpectedly advancing Indigenous representational agendas. Moving panoramas, traveling painting galleries, and wild west shows are also discussed.
The third chapter centers the Ecuadorian scene of the turn of the century, analyzing the omnipresence of Indigenous figures in photography and early Ecuadorian film, with a focus on the movie From Guayaquil to Quito (1929) by Carlos Endara. The chapter positions these depictions of Indigenous communities as belonging to or being excluded from modernity as a key component of Andean visuality. This chapter also considers anthropological photographic types and early indigenist films and imagery.
Finally, the dissertation’s afterword explores the concept of countervisuality through the discussion of contemporary artwork by Indigenous creators. These recent, ongoing artistic practices respond to the legacy of the forms of visuality discussed in the main chapters and invite conversations about issues of agency and the archival potential of new art.
Recommended Citation
Haro Carrion, Maria Beatriz, "Picturing Americans: Indigeneities and Modern Visuality (1873-1929)" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6280
Included in
American Art and Architecture Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, Latin American Languages and Societies Commons, Modern Art and Architecture Commons, Native American Studies Commons
