“Will Wilson, Citizen of the Navajo Nation,” by Will Wilson.
When a modern artist makes new work designed to look old, we often assume that he has observations to make about history. He is making a comment that might also feel like a corrective. He is returning to past aesthetics in order to fix something. Maybe he is even there to retrieve something. The world got it wrong, and we can reach across time, intervene, and make it right.
But sometimes, an artist turns to vintage techniques out of affection for them. Sometimes he is enchanted by the widescreen characteristics of art made at a time when the world seemed to spin more cautiously than it does now. The Navajo Nation photographer Will Wilson, for instance, is drawn to the deliberate quality of the slow-developing “wet plate” photography associated with the 19th century.
Wilson shoots his Native American sitters in conditions that a few of his distant ancestors might have recognized. He coats a sheet with chemicals that catch the light and waits with his subject, for many still minutes, for the image to appear in silver and shadow. His return to these early processes contains a wish: that we might apprehend Native Americans with more sensitivity, detail and attention to individuality than our photographic chroniclers did a century and a half ago.
It also contains a secret compliment. “In Conversation: Will Wilson,” now on view at The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in Summit, makes the photographer’s appreciation for his forerunners’ styles evident. It also betrays a grudging appreciation for the forerunners themselves. The show puts prints by Wilson in dialogue with works by Edward Sheriff Curtis, the early 20th Century Midwesterner whose many celebrated shots of Native Americans contributed to popular misapprehensions that have endured for decades. Curtis meant to be scientific, but he was besotted with archetypes and romantic notions typical of the period in which he worked.
“Insurgent Hopi Maiden Melissa Pochoema, Citizen of the Hopi Tribe,” by Will Wilson.
He was also a gifted portraitist with a knack for wringing drama out of available light. This show’s curatorial notes and wall text insist that Wilson’s intention is to decenter Curtis and, in the process, open our minds to the possibility of equitable cultural exchange. No doubt that is true. To a Native American, the enduring cult of Curtis must be infuriating. To a photographer, though, Curtis is a master craftsman who deserves celebration if not outright imitation. And it is as clear as a photographic lens that Wilson is excited by Curtis’ works.
Curtis was praised for his understanding of the storytelling possibilities of shadow. His subjects always seemed to be emerging or receding, and that reinforced the sense that we were in the presence of a pivot in history. Wilson’s work isn’t dissimilar. His wet plate wizardry imparts immediate cinematic depth to his subjects. They are at once glossy and weathered, star-kissed and commonplace.
“William ‘Bill’ Howell, Citizen of Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, Full-Blood 2016” rolls toward us on a bicycle, stern, wise and white-haired, with a face as wrinkled as an old avocado. Even his eyebrows look creased. High-contrast development emphasizes the depth of his eyes and the contours and pockmarks in his cheeks. Then there is the weight of his frown and the intensity of his stare. His pained expression is a microcosm of the weeping world around him.
As is common with vintage plate photography, the background isn’t square; instead, the visible universe curves around Howell as if he is in the center of a marble. Black drippings and streaks on the print reinforce the impression that this cyclist is navigating a decayed planet. This is a protagonist through and through, humanized by the reading glasses in the center of his collar and the cap that dangles from his handlebars, but otherwise ennobled by context and the moral authority he carries.
“Nakotah LaRance, Citizen of the Hopi Nation,” by Will Wilson.
How does Wilson make heroes out of his sitters? Just like the glamour photographers for magazines, he recognizes that illumination is the best cosmetologist. Light is everywhere in his prints, shining off the rhinestones of the hat of “Swil Kanim, Violinist, Citizen of the Lummi Nation,” bronzing the impossibly smooth cheeks of “Raven Knight, Citizen of the Jicarilla Apache Nation,” and reflecting off the plastic surface of the headphones that ring the neck of “Nakotah LaRance, Citizen of the Hopi Nation.” Light paints LaRance’s fingernails and blushes his high cheekbones, and gives him the appearance of a man of steel in temporary repose. The manga in his hand and the Game Boy on his lap ground him, fiercely, in the present moment, but his long hair and defiant expression are markers of a nonconformist with no patience for restrictions, temporal or otherwise.
Sci-fi signifiers return with ferocity in “Insurgent Hopi Maiden Melissa Pochoema, Citizen of the Hopi Tribe” (see above), a pert young woman in a tunic with her hair piled in a pair of topknots and a shoulder exposed. She could have a laser blaster concealed behind her back. This is a pointed reminder that George Lucas borrowed Princess Leia’s look — and, perhaps, her defiance — from Native Americans. It is also, unmistakably, a shot taken by a fan of “Star Wars.”
How much does this attunement to contemporary storytelling differ from the 19th century romanticism that “In Conversation” means to displace? Less than the curators seem to think. Wilson’s understanding of the role of stagy charisma in successful photographic portraiture would, no doubt, have been enthusiastically applauded by Curtis. Curtis’ sitters were shot like stars; Wilson’s are, too. Wilson makes prints that are highly emotional; so did Curtis.
But Curtis did not always extend to his sitters the courtesy of a name. Instead they were often called “Qahatika Water Girl” or “Girl and Jar,” or given some other generic descriptor. They were treated as distinct human beings, but first, they were representatives of their tribes and ways of life that were disappearing under the pressure of westward U.S. expansion. Curtis, a born classifier, had a tendency to treat his subjects as examples, or even as specimens.
Wilson, on the other hand, goes out of his way to individuate each sitter, hanging a handle on them, putting them in cultural context, describing them in some detail, and letting them be as weird and thorny as they want to be. Old shots of Native Americans often depicted them in elaborate dress, or holding objects of social significance: weapons, pipes, ritual poles, pottery. Wilson plays on this, snapping his sitters with personal items like books and musical instruments, and capturing them in outfits that allude to the past but also remind us that The Wild West is long gone. The grinning “Allen Ryan, 2015” wears a T-shirt with a modified version of the Chief Wahoo logo that forced an embarrassed Cleveland baseball team to rename its franchise. Instead of “Indians,” the shirt reads “Caucasians,” and in place of the feathered headdress, the cartoon caricature wears a dollar sign.
“Two Moons,” by Edward Sheriff Curtis.
Given the cleverness of the Wilson prints and their sheer size — many blown up bigger than a widescreen TV — the smaller and less glossy photographs put “In Conversation” seem destined to be overwhelmed. Surprisingly, it isn’t like that at all. Modest they are and old they seem, but Curtis’ photographs still retain the power to fascinate. “Two Moons,” an image of a Cheyenne warrior and veteran of the battle at Little Big Horn, leans back in his beads and tassels with the authority of a victor. He looks friendly but wary. He could tangle at any moment but would prefer not to.
“Yamasaki in Tlu’wulahu Costume With Speaker’s Staff, Qagyuhl, 1914,” another chief, interposes his carved stick between himself and the photographer. He angles it back against his left shoulder and cheek until he is in the shadow of his symbol of rulership. “If you want to get to me,” he seems to be saying, “you’ll have to get through my spiritual protectors.” Even the Girl and Jar shares the grace and poise of the chiefs, holding her head up under a crown of earthenware, keeping her back straight, staying prepared, ready, indefatigable under pressure.
The nobility of the Native American is, of course, a cliché. It was examined and thoroughly skewered in “Indigenous Identities,” a thunderously good show at The Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick last year. (Wilson’s striking self-portrait was part of that exhibition). Curtis’ shots are colored by his prejudices. It is, however, unfair to pillory him too much. No matter how carelessly he named them, his images do locate and highlight the irreducible personality within his subjects. He bestowed grace and careful attention on chiefs and commoners alike.
Wilson’s critique of Curtis’ outlook is irrefutable, and no doubt he is annoyed by Curtis’ influence on him. Nevertheless, we can call this what it is: a show of two portraitists who share more than they don’t, including an affection for light and shadow, a penchant for high drama, a taste for tale-spinning, a weakness for contemporary styles, and a desire to make a meaningful intervention in the telling of the story of Native Americans. If they could have a conversation, they would have a lot to talk about. I imagine they would get along fine.
“In Conversation: Will Wilson” will be at The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in Summit through Aug. 23. Visit artcenternj.org.
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