Three young Tlingit children. Photo from Vincent Soboleff Photograph Collection, ca. 1896-1920. Alaska State Library - Historical Collections.
The Lens blog of The New York Times explores a new book, A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country:
The black-and-white photograph taken in Killisnoo, Alaska, at the turn of the 20th century depicts a group of fishermen reeling in a gigantic halibut. The image is lighthearted and almost comical: workers smile as the imposing creature writhes perilously close to them. What makes the photograph (Slide 5) unusual is not its subject matter but its subjects. The fishermen, working in apparent harmony, represent a cross section of the population of Killisnoo, an island off southeastern Alaska that was an important outpost for American businesses and tourism. Several of the men are white; at least two are Native American, members of the Tlingit community; and one is Asian. Taken at a time when racial integration was the exception and not the rule in the United States, the image by Vincent Soboleff, a Russian-American amateur photographer, is noteworthy. As the Dartmouth anthropologist Sergei A. Kan argues in his new book, “A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in Alaska” (University of Oklahoma Press), Mr. Soboleff’s images of the United States territory, especially its Native population, are also significantly different from others of the period.Get the Story:
Lens: A Russian-American Photographing Native Alaska (The New York Times 7/17)
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