Up from the archives, Christine Turnauer's mid-'80s portraits of indigenous North American pow wows
In 1986, Austrian photographer Christine Turnauer (born 1946) traveled thousands of miles from Northern Alberta to Southern Montana, with a mobile studio tent in tow, to document the traditional dance contests of indigenous North Americans known as pow wows. A pow wow offers an occasion to meet and dance, sing, socialize and celebrate culture; pow wows may vary in length from a one-day event to major occasions lasting a week.
Turnauer portrayed the dance contests, their participants and related events in austere black and white, encouraging collaboration in the construction of her portraits and without staging the images herself. Turnauer is author of the previous monographs Presence (2014) and Dignity of the Gypsies (2018).