Robert Phillips on photographic practices
Following the earlier example of Paul Kane, through the 1880’s and into the 1920’s, many Canadian and American painters such as Edmund Morris, Frederick Verner, Emily Carr and Langdon Kihn, and photographers such as Edward Curtis, O.E. Buell and Geraldine Moodie, embarked on extensive projects to document the ‘vanishing races” for posterity, a project we now see was conflicted and fraught with contradiction.
Although crucial to Henderson’s artistic process, photography is never mentioned in the many newspaper articles about his portraits, perhaps because it may have, by the standards of the time, contradicted the romantic notion of him as a painter directly engaged with his subjects. Henderson was a good if not accomplished photographer in both the documentary and Pictorialist manner and used these photographs as the basis or reference points for both portraits and landscapes. As well, he had reference books in his studio including, American Indian Life, edited by Elsie Clews Parson and illustrated by Grant Lafarge, an important anthology of pieces about Indian life and cultures. He may also have been aware of Morris’s use of photography in his project and certainly of the photographs of Edward Curtis in The North American Indian. Interestingly, Curtis corresponded with Gooderham, and was photographing the Blackfoot in Alberta in 1924 including Bull Bear, who was painted by Henderson in 1923. Curtis was also in Northern Saskatchewan to photograph the Cree in 1926.
James Henderson (from left)
Untitled (possibly Dick Rider) in James Henderson’s Studio, 1940
vintage gelatin silver print on paper
14.8 x 9.2 cm
Collection of the MacKenzie Art Gallery.
Eliza Rider and Child in Henderson Studio, c. 1930
vintage gelatin silver print on paper
14.7 x 8.7 cm
Collection of the MacKenzie Art Gallery.
So I have heard that some of these artists of the time – documenting the “vanishing” races dressed their subjects and the regalia that is illustrated in the portraits did not really belong to the subjects and often did not even represent their own traditional dress. What about Henderson?