Photographic History Collection: Gertrude Käsebier Collection

Kasebier, Gertrude · 1898-1912

The Gertrude Käsebier Collection of American Indian portraits in the Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History consists of 112 platinum and gum-bichromate prints. The photographic prints are important visual records documenting Sioux Indian tribesmen, women, and children, in studio or non-Indian settings. Contrary to popular and sometimes staged late-19th-century imagery of American Indians in full ceremonial clothing and accessories, Käsebier captured on film the poignant expressions and personality of the Indians that reflected her personal experience of the true, “raw,” and “authentic” Native American. The photographs in the Collection are rare glimpses of Indians in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show; they exhibit Käsebier's renowned artistic, sensitive, and captivating style of pictoralism. The collection was donated to the Museum by Käsebier’s granddaughter Mina Turner, in March 1969.