RECITING THE PAST IN NORTHWEST ALASKA PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK

摘要

This paper follows some photographs produced by Edward Curtis from his fieldwork in northwest Alaska in the summer of 1927. Inspired by Deborah Poole's work on the circulation of image-objects, it offers an account of their production and changing appeal in the United States. What makes these particular prints interesting is the contemporary work that they facilitate in northwest Alaska, in a hotel built in the vicinity of the sites where these images were first taken. What difference does their lodging in that context make? What sorts of subjects and subjectivities do they cultivate there? How can these image-objects in the hotel be looked at differently? In responding, it is suggested that these particular prints recite, re-situate, and re-sight the past in provocative ways.