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Artist/Maker Gifford, Robert Swain (1840-1905)* Dec 24, 1840-Jan 15, 1905

MediumNegative, Glass, Dry Plate

Dimensions3 1/4 × 4 in. (8.3 × 10.2 cm)

Object number1981.34.497

Institutional Credit LineCourtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum

DescriptionBoats on the rocky beach, Alaska; photo taken from the Harriman ExpeditionLabel TextThe Harriman Alaska Expedition was led by Edward Harriman, a railroad tycoon and big game hunter, who organized a group of scientists and artists to travel the Alaskan coast for two months in 1899. Assembling his team through contacts at the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Geographic Society, Harriman tapped renowned individuals like Edward Curtis, John Muir, and New Bedford–area resident Robert Swain Gifford, who served as one of the artists for the expedition. The publications of their expedition were widely distributed. The group claimed to have discovered over six hundred new species, mapped previously undiscovered fjords and glaciers, and encountered coastal Indigenous communities, including the Tlingit. Some members of the expedition stole artifacts from the deserted Tlingit village of Cape Fox, marking a moment of cultural confusion. Whereas the visitors understood the settlement to be abandoned, regional groups saw the space as still occupied by living cultural items.

Almost one hundred dry-plate glass negatives recorded Gifford’s experiences, documenting Indigenous communities and cultures, as well as the Arctic landscape. His struggle to force photographic chemical processes to adapt to a new climate is evident when you look at the negatives, which are marked, crazed, and fogged (fig. 1.13). They serve as an apt metaphor for his own status as an outsider in an unfamiliar place trying to fit his way of knowing onto another region and its people. Gifford made three paintings of Kodiak and Port Clarence (fig. 1.14) in oil and watercolor. These images occasionally include Indigenous figures and human settlement. For the most part, however, Gifford’s photographs and paintings present the circumpolar North as a vast territory of extreme beauty and sublimity. More so than the New England landscapes that dominated his oeuvre, these works focus on untapped natural resources ripe for extraction and support ideas about colonial settlement.ProvenanceThese photographs picture people across Inuit Nunaat taken during periods of intense colonial pressure and extractive, violent encounter (violence in many forms). NBWM is considering how we should address culturally sensitive materials like these in the collection. Our work in reckoning with these collections (and others like them), their histories and legacies with descendant communities, and our responsibilities toward researchers is ongoing. We strive to fulfill our responsibility, to be sensitive to content, traditional knowledge, and our role as stewards of these items, while ensuring that their use does not perpetuate colonial patterns of oppression. If you have a comment, please contact: curatorial@whalingmuseum.org

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