Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 30, 2007|Volume 35, Number 23

This 1984 photograph of Edward Gumbs, a member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, is among the images in an archive of works by Toba Pato Tucker.

Photographic archive offers
multi-faceted portrait of America

The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library has acquired the archive of American photographer Toba Pato Tucker, who for the past 30 years has compiled a record of Americans of different races and ethnicities, including one of Long Island's oldest African-American communities and various Native American tribes.

The archive, now part of the library's Collection of Western Americana, contains more than 1,100 vintage exhibition prints, more than 2,800 related work prints and extensive personal records -- including audiotapes and transcriptions of interviews from many of her projects.

Merging documentary intentions with the artistic insights of portraiture, Tucker has spent three decades pursuing her interest "in recording continuity and change in American culture for history and artistic purposes." Her visual record of Americans includes images of individuals on the streets of Manhattan; the Onondaga Indian Nation of upstate New York; the rural town of Heber Springs in Arkansas; and the Pueblo and Navajo communities of New Mexico and Arizona; as well as people in other landscapes.

Tucker was nearly 40 years old when she became interested in photography in the 1970s. Basically self-taught, she was inspired to become a full-time photographer by a workshop with the legendary teacher and photographer Harold Feinstein. A friend, photographer Toby Old, mentored her technical abilities, including the use of a secondhand Hasselblad camera that she purchased and continues to use today.

Tucker became proficient in developing negatives and making black-and-white silver prints to produce the exact dynamic range of tone and contrast she wished to achieve. Later, she learned the techniques of color printing, primarily to depict landscapes. Seeking to record history through individual, family and generational portraits, Tucker often recorded oral history interviews with her subjects to allow their voices to enrich her imagery. She is noted for a serene and formal visual style and for her ability to recognize the individual characteristics and dignity of each person she photographs.

One of Tucker's early projects included making portraits of residents of Daytop Village, a drug rehabilitation facility in New York City and upstate New York. The facility's director asked the photographer to make portraits to encourage the residents to see "the potential to be what they see in their portraits."

Aware of the complicated historical relationship between photographers and Native Americans, Tucker secures permission before taking any photographs and has promised not to use her photographs of them commercially. In addition, she has provided prints to each community of Native Americans she photographs so it can keep a portfolio for its archives.

"Some time tomorrow, generations from now, our progeny will be able to look back at this moment in time and see children who have become great-grandparents and they will see the light of love and determination in the eyes of our people ... and they can be grateful for the perseverance, patience, integrity and genius of Toba Tucker to record for the future this moment," said Oren R. Lyons, faithkeeper in the Turtle Clan, Onandaga Council of Chiefs, and the Distinguished Service Professor of American Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Tucker has had three books of her photography published: "Heber Springs Portraits: Continuity & Change in the World Disfarmer Photographed," "Haudenosaunee: Portraits of the Fire Keepers, The Onondaga Nation" and "Pueblo Artists: Portraits."

The photographer's work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian and other institutions. Her images have appeared in publications including LIFE, Camera Arts, Native Peoples and The New York Times.

At the Beinecke, Tucker's archive joins a collection of manuscripts, books and photographs on the history and culture of Native Americans, including more than 2,000 photographs of the Blackfoot Indians made by Yale alumnus Walter McClintock in the first decade of the 20th century; the papers of Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of Carlisle Indian School; the papers of Felix Cohen, the author of the first "Handbook of Federal Indian Law"; and the literary papers of Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch, Gerald Vizenor and Joseph Bruchac. Tucker's archive also enhances the library's collection of contemporary American photographers that includes the archives of David Plowden, Eve Arnold, Robert Giard, Carl Mydans and Miguel Gandert.

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