Take a Picture of the Indian/Take a Picture with the Indian

2000

Zig Jackson

(Mandan/ Hidatsa/ Arikara, b. 1957)

Culture

America

Medium

gelatin silver print (diptych)

Measurements

Paper: 50.2 x 60.4 cm (19 3/4 x 23 3/4 in.); Matted: 71.1 x 81.3 cm (28 x 32 in.); right image: 35.3 x 25.1 cm (13 7/8 x 9 7/8 in.); left image: 35.4 x 26.1 cm (13 15/16 x 10 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Friends of Photography 2010.226

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

Location

101B Prints & Drawings

Description

Zig Jackson travels with his camera to different American Indian reservations, visiting former schoolmates and friends and taking pictures. While driving through Cherokee, North Carolina, he observed billboards inviting tourists to “Take
a Picture with an Indian.” Jackson spent the day speaking with a tribal elder about his life and family and documenting the method by which he made a living—posing with tourists for a fee. Committed to showing the daily life and reality
of Indigenous populations, Jackson’s diptych highlights the cliches perpetuated by literature and the media that many people still hold about Native Americans in the United States.