"Williams' work highlights how photography was indeed a powerful tool in the construction of the 'primitive Indian' in need of colonial control and reformation." --Sage Race Relations Abstracts"This imaginative book moves well beyond the conventional biographical approaches to photographers' work and the usual assumptions about the objectivity of historical photographs to develop a more subtle argument about how photographs can function as ideological documents. It is an important contribution to the field of western history as well as to the history of photography."--Martha A. Sandweiss, author of Print the Legend: Photography and the AmericanWest"Williams does a very admirable job of sorting out the tangled yet oddly reciprocal mix of ideologies that informs the character of the photographs. Perhaps just as critically, she shrewdly points out a glaring void for other scholars to follow and fill in, and for that I am grateful, because many of the protagonists have yet come to terms with the presented history."--Larry McNeil, Boise State University and Tlingit and Nisgaá Nations"Williams's intricate readings of the intersections of class, race, gender, economic, religious, and political status return some measure of control to the photogrpahic subjects and honor the multiple, vexing reasons for their participation in the construction of a visual archive that has been broadly used to disenfranchise Indians."--Lisa MacFarlane, Western American Literature"Williams' work highlights how photography was indeed a powerful tool in the construction of the 'primitive Indian' in need of colonial control and reformation.

" --Sage Race Relations Abstracts"This imaginative book moves well beyond the conventional biographical approaches to photographers' work and the usual assumptions about the objectivity of historical photographs to develop a more subtle argument about how photographs can function as ideological documents. It is an important contribution to the field of western history as well as to the history of photography."--Martha A. Sandweiss, author of Print the Legend: Photography and the AmericanWest"Williams does a very admirable job of sorting out the tangled yet oddly reciprocal mix of ideologies that informs the character of the photographs. Perhaps just as critically, she shrewdly points out a glaring void for other scholars to follow and fill in, and for that I am grateful, because many of the protagonists have yet come to terms with the presented history."--Larry McNeil, Boise State University and Tlingit and Nisgaá Nations"Williams's intricate readings of the intersections of class, race, gender, economic, religious, and political status return some measure of control to the photogrpahic subjects and honor the multiple, vexing reasons for their participation in the construction of a visual archive that has been broadly used to disenfranchise Indians."--Lisa MacFarlane, Western American Literature.