Adjusting the Lens

Adjusting the Lens explores the role of photography in contemporary renegotiations of the past and in Indigenous art activism. Through moving and powerful case studies, contributors analyze photographic practices and heritage related to Indigenous communities in Canada, Australia, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the United States. In the process, they call attention to how Indigenous people are using old photographs in new ways to empower themselves, revitalize community identity, and decolonize the colonial record.

The original research presented in Adjusting the Lens offers a transnational perspective on this emerging field in Indigenous photography studies. It is an exciting collection that challenges old ways of thinking and meaningfully advances the crucially important project of reclamation.

Sigrid Lien is a professor of art history at the University of Bergen, Norway. She is the author of Pictures of Longing: Photography and the Norwegian-American Migration and coeditor, with Justin Carville, of Contact Zones: Photography, Migration, and Cultural Encounters in the United States, among other works. She was also Norwegian team leader for the projects Photographs, Colonial Legacy, and Museums in Contemporary European Culture (PhotoCLEC, 2010–12), and Negotiating History: Photography in Sámi Culture (2014–17). Hilde Wallem Nielssen is a professor of intercultural studies at NLA University College, Bergen, Norway. Among her publications is Ritual Imagination: A Study of Tromba Possession among the Betsimisaraka in Eastern Madagascar and, with Sigrid Lien, Museumsforteljingar. Vi og dei andre i kulturhistoriske museum (Museum Stories: We and the Others in Cultural History Exhibitions). Her work encompasses rituals and religious movements, missionary ethnography, museum exhibitions, and photography, in particular photographs from Sámi areas.

Contributors: Elizabeth Edwards, Beth Greenhor, Ingeborg Høvik, Piita Irniq, Laura Junka-Aikio, Veli-Pekka Lehtola, Jane Lydon, Donna Oxenham, Carol Payne, Laura Peers, Mette Sandbye, Hanne Hammer Stien, waaseyaa'sin Christine Sy, Manitok Thompson, Deborah Kigjugalik Webster, Sally Kate Webster, Carol Williams, Christina Williamson