Native Lands: Scottish photographer helps
American Indian reclaim their culture

Interview by Alison Gregor, Curator Jackson Hole Museum.
Jackson Hole News September 1996.
Wyoming, United States of America.

Art can be a powerful tool in documenting the destruction and rejuvenation, the struggles and triumphs of a culture. Andrew Hogarth, a Scottish native, has spent more than fifteen years documenting the culture of the American Indians and the lands they occupy.

Perhaps it is fitting that the photographer comes from a land with its own history of tribes – called “clans” – highly influenced by the highlands and lowlands they defended. Hogarth will display more than thirty of his photographic images of American Indians in a show called “Native Lands: The West of the American Indian 1982-1992” from September, 19 to 28 at the Jackson Hole Museum at Glenwood and Deloney.

The culture of the Scottish braes disappeared before it could be captured on film, but Hogarth has worked to document the pueblos and ruins of New Mexico and Arizona, as well as the homelands of the Lakota-Sioux and Cheyenne in South Dakota and Montana.

“My collection of images is the product of a personal quest which began many years ago at the Saturday matinees in the movie houses of Edinburgh, Scotland, and has incorporated ninety-two thousand miles across the Great Plains and Southwest of the United States of America,” Hogarth wrote in an artist statement.

Just as Americans thrill over Scottish history as depicted in movies like “Braveheart” or “Rob Roy,” Hogarth was attracted to the romanticised and glorified images of American Indians he saw on the big screen. Then he came to the United States.

Now Hogarth has taken off his Hollywood-coloured glasses and is an aficionado of American Indian history. He will not let his viewers forget the abuses suffered by American Indians.

“The potent force of colonisation and the doctrine of manifest destiny is perhaps best exemplified by the policies of President Andrew Jackson,” Hogarth wrote. “His 1830 Indian Removal Act forced the relocation of Indian tribes to territory west of the Mississippi River without regard to lifestyle, agricultural or nomadic, cultural or religious identities, traditional enmities or political persuasion.”

Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears “formalised the basis of the struggle that characterised much of Native America’s recent history, and is still evident today,” Hogarth wrote.

Hogarth, who now lives in Sydney, Australia, has travelled nine times through traditional lands of the Apache, Navajo, Cheyenne, Lakota-Sioux and Arapaho. He attempts to capture the confidence, pride and joy that American Indians have rediscovered in their culture and history.

In photographing American Indians, Hogarth feels he is documenting the history of a culture. “The history of Native America is a living entity and very much part of the people today,” he wrote. “It has not been relegated to the history books as often happens in our society. It is felt rather than viewed, embraced rather than held at a detached distance. “Ancestral lines are well remembered and very much part of the identity of each individual.”

In this day and age, many undocumented cultures have been lost in the giant swathe of history. The artwork of individuals such as Hogarth documents aboriginal cultures in images that can be felt rather than simply viewed, and known rather than simply observed.

The Hogarth show will hang in the museum’s Native American Room from September 19-28 as part of the 1996 Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival.

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American Indians honoured

Interview by Brian Woodward.
Australian Camera Magazine July 1996.
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Simmering beneath the surface we all have a passion. Few of us forsake all and devote our lives to that passion. Andrew Hogarth did. Brian Woodward reports on his photos, his books and his quiet determination to right wrongs.

"I learned a lot” said Andrew Hogarth in his quiet, unassuming way. He has been explaining how an interest became a passion and a passion a career and a completely overwhelming life.

In the process of moving from interest to his present stage, Andrew Hogarth learned about America's native Indian people, refined his skills as a photographer and author, became publisher and publicist and anthropologist as well.

The next step was to take his message to the world through powerful, elegant and dignified images of native Americans and their environment. To do this he had to become his own publisher.

It isn't hard to understand what led Andrew Hogarth to his passion and beyond. As the veil of untruth is lifted from the world's histories of indigenous people, cliches are seen as lies and long held beliefs challenged.

There are strong parallels between the European settlements in Australia and the United States of America. If there is any major difference between the two battles between settlers and natives it is that the American native's culture lent itself to quickly adopting the Europeans' weapons of war.

Battles between aborigines and soldiers or settlers in early Australia record almost no mention of native Australians with firearms. The battles were often swifter with the outcome decided as much by the difference in the technology of war weapons than the bravura of the combatants.

As time reveals more of the conflicts of the past, it becomes increasingly obvious that the native Australian didn't stand a chance against the large numbers of well-armed soldiers. As Australia heads towards reconciliation, let us hope the memories of these sad times remain as insurance against such a thing ever happening again.

But, we've all seen the battles between American Indians and the soldiers or settlers. While shame or ignorance prevented the clashes between Australian aborigines and Europeans becoming a source of entertainment, the American native's defeat was run and re-run as movies, books and comics for the pleasure of kids and grown-ups alike.

Goodies wore white hats, baddies wore black hats and the cavalry always arrived in the nick of time to save the beautiful white woman from being scalped by an evil Indian who had shot her husband and laughed while his warrior tribesmen used rifles, bows and arrows to murder innocent settlers in their covered wagons.

Of course such events were nonsense. But they became part of white man’s lore. Andrew Hogarth researched and discovered that native Americans were often slaughtered while armed with nothing but bows and arrows against the rifles and canons of the soldiers.

Like the Australian aborigine, the issue was land. If, like me, you're an Australian with a heritage that stretches back more than 150 years, you probably rankle when the term “invasion” is used to describe white settlement in Australia. Both sides of my family had little say in where they were sent after being found guilty of stealing sheep and emptying the contents of a country mansion.

However, like so many Australians that have been here so long I don’t belong anywhere else. I’d like to reconcile the differences which have existed for more than 200 years between the original Australians and we blow-ins.

One way to start honest research into the past and correct errors wherever and whenever possible. It is this set of principles which gave Andrew Hogarth the journalist the impetus to start correcting the history of the Native Americans.

Six books later, his reputation is unimpeachable, having won awards, and his photographs having been the subject of exhibitions in Australia and the United States of America.

To pay for his research Andrew publishes his books and offers limited editions of the photographs reproduced in the books. The quality of his work is exceptional. Not only are the images beautifully composed and exposed (he uses Olympus equipment), but his sensitivity in capturing the dignity and beauty of the American Indian of all ages has to be seen to be fully appreciated. The few photographs reproduced here don’t do justice to the limited edition specials which are available for $295 framed.

Andrew. Hogarth deserves admiration. He has taken a lifelong Interest which grew to become a passion and has made It a worthy cause. Each of the barriers which slow down lesser folk have caused him little more than a pause.

To see his various books, visit bookshops specialising in less mainstream titles such as the Napoleon Military Bookshop at 336 Pitt Street, Sydney, New South Wales or phone 02-9264-7560 or write direct to Andrew Hogarth at P O Box 213, Waverley, Sydney, New South Wales 2024.

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Powwow wow!

Australian Camera Magazine April 1997.
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

An exhibition in Sydney this month illustrates how one man’s fascination with Native American Indians led to a brilliant photographic career.

In 1974 Andrew Hogarth migrated from Edinburgh, Scotland to New Zealand and then onto Australia, but this didn’t mean he settled down to the quiet life. He has, in fact, spent the last twenty-two years travelling, sharing his time between Australia, Great Britain and the United States of America, with many other voyages through the Pacific and South-East Asia. Still, he does call Australia home.

As a youngster in Edinburgh he became fascinated with American Indians, and years later set out to discover native America for himself. That was in 1981. Unfortunately, travelling with a tour company and meeting just a few ‘token’ Indians proved a great disappointment.

Yet this only strengthened his resolve, and since then he has travelled in excess of 200,000 kilometres through the Great Plains and Southwest region of the United States of America, rarely leaving the small dusty backroads.

His fieldwork has resulted in the books, Lakota Spirit, Battlefields Monuments and Markers, Cheyenne Hole and Native lands, and these in turn have led to three major photographic exhibitions, the latest of which opens this month at Graphis Fine Art gallery in Woollarha, Sydney.

Titled “Powwow: Native American Celebration” it couldn’t have come at a better time, as over the years there has been a continued growth in the cultural pride of American Indians, together with a growing interest in the subject in Australia. Certainly Australia’s native Aboriginals are themselves undergoing a change in cultural awareness.

There are strong parallels to be drawn between the two cultures and Andrew Hogarth’s exhibition, in addition to its stunning images, helps explain just why there is such widespread renewed interest in native cultures.

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Tribal Tributes.

Interview by Caroline Chisholm.
The Daily Telegraph April 1997.
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

“Two years ago, Scottish-born Andrew Hogarth quit his steady job in Australia and set off to travel around America to sell his books. Now, with thousands of kilometers under his belt, not to mention book sales, Hogarth is bringing the subject matter of his efforts – photography of Native American Indians – back to Sydney.

Hogarth has photographed American Indian culture over sixteen years and has produced four books, Lakota Spirit, Battlefields Monuments and Markers (about the American Indians’ battles with the United States government), Cheyenne Hole and Native Lands.

The photographs also have appeared in numerous exhibitions, and while Hogarth was selling his work in the United States, he took enough shots for another exhibition. This exhibition, called Powwow: Native American Celebration, is making its debut in Sydney.

“It’s the American Indian people coming together in their culture for a celebration,” Hogarth said. Every member of the tribe gets involved in making regalia from traditional hides and beadwork, and Hogarth remembers being at a powwow last year with about 10,000 present. “The atmosphere is just tremendous and they’re in the middle of nowhere.”

He always intended to record images of native Americans to bring understanding of the Indians into a modern context, because few images have been collected since the early sepia days of photography.

“The three exhibitions have introduced people to Indians who are living today, and following their culture today, and that’s important because it takes the American Indian out of that time warp.”

But why would a self-taught Scotsman travel across the United states of America to record another people ? ‘I grew up on a ‘reservation’ – a housing estate with 3,000 families, no amenities, a church with a minister who used to put the fear of God into us, a chip shop.

“If the minister didn’t get you, you’d probably end up with bowel cancer from eating all the pies and greasy fish. I would go into the reservations with this Scottish upbringing. I don’t visit the Lakota-Sioux and Cheyenne reservations and knock on doors, because if someone had done it to me in Scotland all those years ago, I know what I would have done to them!

“Being a Scotsman, I basically got in amongst it and saw where the bullets flew, and then I tried to create an image for posterity. Nobody else was doing it.” Hogarth said his hobby was never intended to become a livelihood, but admits the prospect of national exhibitions in America is exciting.

His three exhibitions will soon be available to Exhibits USA, a company with access to 7000 museums and art centres in America. Exhibits USA frame, mount and package exhibitions and also have access to colour publishers and CD-ROM producers, so Hogarth is hoping the possibilities for use of his work are endless.

“I never thought it was going to be like this, “Hogarth said. “I thought it would be nice if people went in the stores and purchased the books – but then the Battlefields book sold out. I had 3500 copies. He still uses the camera he has had for sixteen years, an Olympus OM 20, with one 35mm to 75mm zoom lens.

His approach to his United States travels is equally pragmatic: “I’m just pleased to have survived it. I’m not a roadside casualty. I haven’t been dumped behind one of the bars as I was having a few beers and trying to hang out. One of the hardest things you can do in your life is come between two cultures which don’t have a lot of respect for each other.”

Powwow: Native American Celebration, Graphis Fine Art Gallery, 150 Edgecliff Road, Woollarha, until April 30.

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Indian Nation: “Powwow” exhibit focuses on tribes traditions.

Exhibition Review by Kimberley McGee.
The Las Vegas Sun February, 2002.
Nevada, United States of America.

The painted faces of American Indians in Scottish photographer Andrew Hogarth's photos shine with fierce pride. The faces are a reminder of the past and present. Their ceremonial headdresses, breastplates and footwear for annual powwows have been carefully documented by Hogarth in the "Powwow: Native American Celebration" exhibit, on display through April 28 at the Clark County Heritage Museum.

"We thought this really showed American Indians in a way that we hadn't seen before," Chris Leavitt, Curator of Education for the museum, said. "This is an exhibit to teach about our local Indian culture as well as the national culture." Powwows are competitive events where dress and dance styles are judged. They include many tribes and present an opportunity to compare dance techniques, dress and a chance to take pride in Indian culture. "They are a large part of American Indian culture that isn't always seen by the public," Leavitt said. "For some, this is the first time they have ever seen an Indian dressed up in fancy dress for a powwow. Hogarth really captures contemporary Indians."

"We wanted something that would show another side of Indians that people don't see locally," Leavitt said. "This is something people don't see here (in Las Vegas)." The 54 photos by Hogarth depict Indians in festive powwow regalia. Included in the exhibit are traditional Indian dress artefacts from around the country, such as robes and headgear, as well as a large powwow drum, pipes, feathers and beaded shawls.

The large photos are a procession of colour. The powwow dancers don eagle feathers, buckskin, fringe, jingles, beadwork, ribbon work, blankets, turquoise, shells, bells and quills. The costumes are worn with respect to the birds, animals, fish, Earth, water and sky that are a large part of American Indian culture.

"This is one of our most popular exhibits," said Lisa Cordes, development coordinator for Exhibits USA, which finances the travelling show. "It's been all over the southwest and it has drawn a lot of people." The exhibit takes an educational approach with interactive objects. Children can try on anklets and jingle cones, which are used in traditional powwow dances. Guests can also witness beadwork in the making and learn how the intricate breastplates and headgear is traditionally made. Visitors learn there are 557 federally recognised nations, or tribes, in the United States. Through the powwow, American Indians honour the traditions of their ancestors and pay tribute to the people of tribes today.

Hogarth's interests in American Indians was sparked by Saturday matinees at movie theatres in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the late '50s and early '60s. The images of Indians on horseback stuck with Hogarth, who made a pilgrimage to the United States in the '80s to record the American Indian culture with his camera. Hogarth travelled more than 150,000 miles in 17 years to capture the traditional and contemporary moments of Indian gatherings. Hogarth, who now lives in Australia, has said that his fascination is with the living people of an ancient tribe.

"We wanted to bring a flavour of American Indians that was different and presented education opportunities," Leavitt said. "These are pictures of plains Indians, which a lot of people in Nevada don't get a chance to see." The Southern Nevada Indians are much different than those depicted in the Midwest, said Norma Naranjo, a clerk in the Indian education department for the Clark County School District.

But the fact that the culture is held in Hogarth's high regard for the world to peek into a powwow is significant, Naranjo said. "It's important for everyone to understand who they are and the powwows give Indians a chance to see their history and their contributions to society," Naranjo said. "We are very diverse. People don't understand that." Through exhibits such as Hogarth's there is a chance that people might understand the many different faces of American Indians, Naranjo said. Naranjo is a Hopi Indian, which she said differs physically and culturally from the other Indian tribes in Nevada.

"We are not anything like our neighbours, but people group us all together," Naranjo said. "Just because we live in the same state doesn't make us the same. We are as diverse as African-Americans or any other people. We don't like to be stereotyped." Naranjo attends annual powwows to catch up with neighbours and to celebrate the culture. She admires the beadwork by the youth and shares in the stories of the elderly tribe members.

The powwows offer Naranjo and others an opportunity to revel in the culture. "It's important for people to recognise we are not dead," she said. "We are a living culture." Naranjo attends powwows in the spring and summer. They offer a chance to recognise each tribe, its contributions to society and the American Indian culture and visit with friends of all cultures.

"The powwow circuit gives us all a chance to come together and learn from each other," Naranjo said. "That's why we keep it alive today. It's a chance to visit and enjoy and celebrate with everyone." As a teacher of Indian culture, Naranjo has shared the recipes and traditions of her culture with elementary school students throughout the valley. It was in the schools that Naranjo learned how easily the Indian culture can be forgotten or misunderstood.

Twelve years ago a young student asked her a question that shocked her, and shored her resolve to share her culture with the world. The boy peppered Naranjo with questions about American Indians, and asked if she was a true Indian. When she affirmed her ancestry, he shyly asked if Naranjo was a ghost. The child thought American Indians were a people of the past, not the present. "He brought to me the need for us to get out there and let people know we are here and contributing to society," Naranjo said. "That's what you learn at a powwow, how we contribute and the pride we have as a culture."

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Native Heart.

Interview by Rosemarie Milsom.
The Sun Herald, Sunday Life Magazine, April, 2003.
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Self taught photographer Andrew Hogarth is sitting in his second-floor apartment in Sydney's east, talking in a soft Scottish brogue about his tumultuous upbringing in a housing estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh. It was a tough existence; money was tight, alcoholism permeated family life and neighbourhood gangs and petty thieves flourished. He and his younger brother and sister would sometimes go hungry when their electrician father drank his earnings. As the 52-year-old describes how he would lie in bed as a child, rigid with fear while his father bashed his mother and spat abuse, larger-than-life framed portraits of native Americans form a striking, seemingly incongruous backdrop.

There's a photograph of 21-year-old Jay Eagle, a traditional Lakota dancer with long, raven pigtails wrapped in white ribbon, his feathered headdress forming a dramatic ceremonial halo. Lining the hallway are more images: Roy Pete, a burly Navajo dancer with a red, black and white mohawk, and nearby a majestic Khena Bullshields with her distinctive cheekbones, full lips and leather and bone breastplate - looks to the distance.

These are all Hogarth's images and they form part of his travelling exhibition Powwow: Native American Celebration, which is nearing the end of a three-year tour of United States museums, cultural centres and art galleries. He has also written and self-published five books of native American history as well as initiating and publishing a sixth book, Lakota Spirit, an autobiography by respected Lakota leader Jack Little, written before his death in 1985 with the help of his wife, Shirley. Hogarth's internationally renowned body of work has come at great personal expense and he now works as a porter at an aged-care hospital to subsidise his passion.

The story of how a sensitive Scottish lad who rarely spoke until he was 12 ("People thought I was a bit simple") and ended up spending 20 years documenting and photographing the history and ceremony of native American life is full of dramatic twists and turns. Interestingly, it was TV and film that triggered Hogarth's fascination with native 'American culture. "My home life was a mess until I was 15 and started working [as an apprentice graphic reproduction camera operator]," says Hogarth. "Sometimes my father would turn out the power after beating my, mother badly. He never touched us kids, although he nearly killed me one time by throwing a can of beans at me. I turned my head and the can crashed into the side of my skull, fracturing it. Through all of this, I had my western serials, which started in the evening around 6.30, and I'd go to the cinema."

Hogarth idolised the cowboy stars of Bronco, Rawhide and Maverick. To a boy desperately seeking a role model, James Garner and Clint Eastwood offered it all. The local cinema ran two westerns every Saturday, with Bugs Bunny cartoons in between.

"It was all Apaches, wagons, cowboys and guns," says Hogarth. But it wasn't until he stumbled upon the gory final scene of Soldier Blue that he was confronted with the ugly side of America's past. Starring Candice Bergen and Donald Pleasence and based on the 1864 massacre of more than 500 members of a Cheyenne tribe at Sand Creek, Colorado, by the US cavalry, the film features horrific violence (and is not to be confused with the censored version seen on TV).

"I saw these cavalry men burning tepees and a Cheyenne woman ran towards us on the screen and a man on a horse came up behind her with a sabre and whack, her head just flew through the air and then her breasts were cut off. Other women were raped and children were murdered. It had such an impact. Here I was at 22, and up till then nothing I'd seen on TV or at the cinema portrayed native Americans as human. There were bits and pieces patronising them and they were usually portrayed as people who deserved to be subjugated and exterminated at all costs."

Fuelled by the injustice of the massacre, Hogarth immersed himself in the bloody history of the native Americans. He could see parallels in the treatment of the Scots at the hands of the English and, of course, there was his own stormy upbringing. In 1981, he finally seized the opportunity to visit America's Great Plains.

"I was 30," says Hogarth, "and I was married and owned a house. I was being told that this stuff was important in the scheme of life. But I started to feel like there was something more out there."

Not long after, Hogarth was retrenched, his marriage crumbled and he sold his house. "I became one of many Thatcher casualties, and, no, it's not like being injured or killed but it's still traumatic. I remember consciously deciding to find my passion. I ended up booking a trip to America and I bought a camera. I got on a Greyhound bus in Los Angeles and headed to South Dakota and the Black Hills, the sacred heart of the Sioux nation."

Hogarth visited Crazy Horse Memorial, an ambitious project that began in 1939 "When Sioux chief Standing Bear invited sculptor: Korczak Ziolkowski to carve a monument to the great Sioux warrior Chief Crazy Horse, the mastermind behind the defeat of General Custer in 1876. Crazy Horse never allowed himself to be photographed, so his huge image, which is still being carved in a mountain in South Dakota by Ziolkowski's successors, is symbolic of all native Americans.

It was there that Hogarth met Jack Little, a respected native American guide who would later take Hogarth up on the offer of publishing his autobiography. It was the first of many friendships formed during Hogarth's 10 trips to the US (Hogarth settled in Australia in the mid-70s). In the beginning, he rarely photographed people, preferring to focus his rudimentary skills on recording 80-historical battle sites scattered across the Great Plains region.

"I would never enter the reservations," says Hogarth. "I wasn't there to march in and make people feel uncomfortable. To get respect in that part of the land is very hard. I ended up buying an Olympus [camera] and gradually I started photographing people always in natural light and only with their permission.

"Of course I'd get asked if I was going to use the image to make postcards. The idea of a 'white man's camera' does not sit easily with most [Great] Plains tribes." But how did an Australian resident, with a Scottish accent gain the trust of his subjects? "It helped that I wasn't American," Hogarth grins. "I'd say that straight up and people were more open. I also think my upbringing gave me the skills to relate to them. With some of the smaller powwows, if you didn't have a personal invitation, nobody would speak to you."

Hogarth pursued his passion in between working in the graphic design printing industry in Sydney. He poured his money back into his publishing and photography projects, often selling the books from the back of his hire car during his travels. He has participated in 26 exhibitions since 1994, both here and in the US. His main aim has been to educate and inform, a role he hopes to continue by visiting high school history students and talking about his experiences.

After 20 years of travelling, Hogarth is pausing. The camera is packed away and he is working on his autobiography while earning a modest income as a porter. On a coffee table in his lounge room are three wooden boxes with brass clasps. Inside are 700 negatives - culled from thousands - and the key to Hogarth's sense of self.

"It was important to me ... to find something to do that had more soul. After losing my job, what was I going to do? Buy another house, settle down and do as I was told? I'd done as I was told, I'd worked hard and it was still taken away from me. I wanted to pursue a dream. This," he adds, waving his arm in the direction of the three boxes, "is not just about native Americans."

No. It's about a boy who wasn't expected to go far, an adventurer, who grew up and travelled to the other side of the world and found his role models. For further information about Andrew Hogarth's books and photography, visit www.andrewhogarthpublishing.com.

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