Hum of the Soul: Native Lands 1982-1992
by Rob Inder-Smith

Andrew Hogarth’s prowess with a camera has proved as complete as his devotion to digging up the truth in his pictorial, Native Lands. Nobility of the people, the harshness of their land and monuments to their dead have been captured brilliantly in this book of black and white photographs painstakingly dedicated to the cause of the native American - the Plains Indian.

Many of the pictures are of people and it is these that make the book a stand-out example of an author-photographer’s passion for his subject. Of all the expressions plucked by film for immortality, it is the “eyes that have it.”

The classic cover snap of a small Indian boy sums up the quality of the contents. Who knows what the boy was thinking? Hogarth, who first ventured as a stranger among the remaining tribes of North America many years ago, probably has a better idea than anybody who is not one themselves. The eyes have it... The weariness of an oppressed people, the wisdom of an enlightened culture, the distance separating them from us, the observer.

Some of the faces are smiling. But there is no doubt dignity and pride dwell in their hearts, too, as they do with the serene-faced elderly men and women throughout the book. Deep inside us lies the elemental premise – Shakespeare called it our “glassy essence”... the “hum of the soul.”

If ever photographs could capture such a thing, Hogarth has in this book.