Adjusting the Lens : Indigenous Activism Colonial Legacies and Photographic Heritage

Adjusting the Lens explores the role of photography in contemporary renegotiations of the past and in Indigenous art activism. In moving and powerful case studies, contributors analyse 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, revitalise community identity, and decolonise the colonial record.

Adjusting the Lens presents original research in this emerging field in Indigenous photography studies, juxtaposing the historical and the contemporary across a range of geographically and culturally distinctive contexts. The transnational perspective of this exciting collection challenges old ways of thinking and meaningfully advances the crucially important project of reclamation.

Students and scholars of visual culture, Indigenous studies, anthropology, art history, and museum and media studies will find this work both beautiful and useful. It will also appeal to Indigenous cultural heritage professionals, and to museum and archive professionals interested in decolonising practices.